282 MANAGEMENT OF F0KE8T-TREES. 



Indeed, I have met with a writer somewhere in my reading who 

 pusitively asserts, from authenticated evidence, that it was ori- 

 ginally set apart as a wild tract of land merely for the diversion 

 of Kufus, and that he left it as he found it. 



There can be little question that the practice of over-crowding 

 trees in plantations while young is excessively prejudicial, when 

 we take solidity of tissue into consideration. To convince one 

 of this, it is only necessary to examine trees from both open and 

 sheltered situations. In plantations, the true character of the 

 tree is never developed. Tall and weakly in stature, with pale 

 looking, elongated branches, they are like drawing-room guests, 

 well suited for the position in which they are placed, but unfit 

 to baffle with the storms and buffetings of every-day life. But 

 look at a tree springing from a "self-sown" acorn, exposed to 

 all the benefits of atmospheric and solar influence ; how sturdy is 

 it even in its infancy, how quickly does its true character deve- 

 lop itself! There is the indication of coming strength even in 

 its childhood. Its sturdy arms branch out, the trunk rapidly 

 increases, and when maturity has ripened its limbs, decay is not 

 an ingredient in their composition. 



If you cut across two trees of similar age, one from a close 

 plantation, the other from an opposite locality, the amount of 

 duramen will preponderate in favour of the latter, and the texture 

 of all the wood be much firmer. 



To the manner of sowing for timber-trees I would urge par- 

 ticular attention, because I feel confident that any amount of 

 injury to an organized individual in the infant state is detrimental 

 to its good progress. Surely the cotyledons of a large seed, 

 deprived in a great measure of the agents by which its functions 

 are to be performed, must act detrimentally to the young plant's 

 development ? And to indiscriminate pruning much important 

 injury, both in progress and solidity, is due. The manner by 

 which the branches are mechanically, as well as organically, 

 connected with the trunk, when viewed in connexion with phy- 

 siological principles, powerfully supports tlie argument. To 

 enter fully into that inquiry would carry me to too great a 

 length in the present paper. Certain it is that good physiolo- 

 gical views would, if brought to bear upon forest planting and 

 .management, work wonders. Every man thinks he can manage 

 forest trees, because it is deemed nothing more than a bianch 

 of simple labour. The days of empiricism, of dogmatism, in 

 theory as well as practice, are on the wane. It may be that 

 years must loU by ere much change will be perceptible as a 

 whole, but the tide of improvement has set in, and as nothing in 

 the present state of things is stationary, its progress is certain ; 

 all we can do to aid the cause; is to join the spirit of the age, and 

 with every effort at commaud to urge it onward. 



