WOODS OF THE NOVAR ESTATE. 55 



Planting work should not be extended beyond the limits of the 

 area included in the present scheme until the whole of the existing 

 young plantations have been filled up, so far as their condition 

 permits of this being done, and until all the ground now bare has 

 been planted up ; that is to say, not until after the lapse of about 

 ten years. When this stage has been reached, planting and sowing 

 will, for a period of about fifty years, be confined to the restocking 

 of the annual felling-area (for fifteen yeai's only), and to the gradual 

 under-stocking of the younger woods. 



THINNING. 



It is impossible to lay down in advance the exact age at which 

 the thinning of the young woods should begin, to prescribe the 

 number of stems then to be taken or to be left, or to fix the length 

 of the intervals that should elapse between subsequent thinnings ; 

 and the more so as the stock will not everywhere be complete. 

 These matters must be decided with reference to the changing 

 condition of the growing stock ; but it is, nevertheless, possible to 

 indicate the principles that should guide the manager in dealing 

 with them. A plantation of Scots fir will start with about 3550 

 plants (Sh x 3i feet) to the acre ; and the forester's object will be 

 to have standing, upon the best class of soil, at the age of eighty 

 years, about 250 tall, sound, well-shaped trees, such as may 

 realise the highest market price. In inferior localities, where the 

 trees do not attain such large dimensions, the number per acre may 

 exceed 250. To attain this end, it will, from time to time, become 

 necessary to execute a "thinning," which Broilliard defines to be 

 "a lessening of the crowded condition of the crowns of the best 

 trees in a canopy, so as to favour their development." The leaving 

 and favouring of the best tree3 in a crop, and the removal of those 

 which are inferior to them, does not lead to the stems removed 

 during thinnings being always worthless. Undoubtedly the early 

 thinnings of Scots fir will, for the present at any rate, be of small 

 value; but the advantage of clearing out young trees of the class 

 that will at first be cut, and of allowing the best representatives of 

 the stock to stand, will be subsequently felt, not only when the final 

 crop is realised, but intermediately, by a gradual improvement 

 in the quality of the poles removed at each successive thinning, 

 the last of which will yield material approaching in quality to 

 that of the final crop. Say, for example, that after a thinning 

 made on this principle when the crop of Scots fir was forty years 



