90 



and carefully cutting off the point of every shoot, and the half of every new leaf. 

 Then the stem and branches are bound and fantastically distorted by means 

 of wire ; the bark is lacerated to produce protuberances, asperities, and cracks. 

 One branch perhaps is partly broken through and allowed to hang down, as if 

 by accident ; another is mutilated to represent a dead stump ; in short eveiy 

 natural effort of the plant is checked by some studied violence or other. Thus 

 in course of time a forest tree in miniature is produced bearing all the marks of 

 a venerable antiquity (a laugh). With constant attention to branch pruning you 

 may make trees grow as you please, and if you take the roots too into charge 

 and regulate the supply of moisture, you can control their size. 



He had brought with him some sections of young larch fir trees for their 

 inspection, which showed very clearly the effect of a varying amount of rainfall 

 in the variations of thickness in their annular circles of growth. They had often 

 heard of the general effect of an abundance of forest trees in producing an 

 increased rainfall, but he had now to show them the effect of an. increased 

 rainfall, in producing greater growth in the trees. These sections of trees had 

 been kindly sent to him by Mr, Wells of Holm Lacy, and he thought he could 

 not do better than read to them Mr. Wells's own account of them, 



"Passing through a plantation of young larch the other day, which I knew 

 to be twenty years old, I was examining some which had just been felled, and 

 counting the annual rings to see if they corresponded with their age, when I was 

 very much struck with the close resemblance which all I took notice of had to 

 each other. At the twelfth year, counting the annual rings from the outside, 

 something had checked the growth of the tree. When I referred to a memoran- 

 dum of the rainfall I found that that very year was the driest season in the age 

 of the trees (1854), It that year there was only 14 inches of rainfall, and in 

 the following year (1855) though we had 20 inches of rain, which is still below 

 the average, yet the influence of the twelfth is seen in the eleventh year. Then 

 if you go on to the fourteenth year (1852) you find a great increase in the 

 thickness of the annular ring, and in that year we had the very large rainfall 

 of 40 inches, but since 22 inches fell after July its influence would be expected 

 to show itself in the next year, the thirteenth, and this you see is large also 

 though the rainfall for that year was only 23 inches. The three other rings 

 you will also observe are very narrow, and jou will remember the last three 

 years have been dry — for though last summer was wet, it was made so by the 

 autumn rain which fell too late to take effect on the larch." Mr. Wells also 

 refers to a decayed portion in the centre of one of the sections, which he believes 

 to have resulted, " from injury received probably the year after planting from 

 the teeth of a rabbit." 



The sections of the trees were examined with very great interest, and the 

 twenty rings of their annual growth were very distinct, and corresponded 

 closelv in their variations of thickness in the sections of the different trees. 



