THINNINGS. 105 



which corresponds to a mean annual revenue of £3, 5s. per acre. 

 Is that not sufficient 1 ? May we not reply, like the young girl 

 did to her priest, " Since those who marry do well, I will resign 

 myself to it ; let those do better who can." She omitted to state 

 that she was in a violent hurry to get married. We are in the 

 same situation with regard to the spruces. Who cares to watch 

 a forest quietly growing for 150 or 200 years, without interfering 

 beyond the removal of the dead or dying trees 1 It is a good 

 thing, nevertheless, in a few unfrequented parts of the mountains, 

 to spread the increment over thousands of stems, producing timber 

 of the finest quality, even fit for sounding boards with rings only 

 t ±q inch thick. One is exceedingly glad to have such marvellous 

 produce of long years and nature to sell, but who will consent to 

 let his own woods grow at the rate of S inches per century 1 



Given a pole- crop of fine up-reaching spruces, the question is, 

 What ought to be taken out in order to obtain a little produce 

 and at the same time to improve the growth of the better stems'? 

 The answer is less evident, and the need for prudence is greater 

 here than in almost any other forest. An even-aged pole-crop of 

 pure spruce about forty or fifty years old, may contain 800 to 1200 

 stems per acre. Many of these, being completely suppressed, are 

 no longer an annoyance to their neighbour's, but, on the contrary, 

 are a decided gain, inasmuch as they improve the consistence and 

 solid appearance of the crop. There is no good reason for their 

 removal till their leading shoots have dried up, or some fault 

 shows itself. The real struggle in the upper story thus lies 

 among some 500 to 600 crowns. This is too many for us; it 

 would mean less than i of an inch annually on the diameter. 

 We can gradually reduce the number by gently freeing the best 

 and most vigorous crowns, but the crop is one united whole, 

 inter-dependent and inter-responsible. Any sudden openings 

 may tear or loosen the roots of one or two, and in consequence 

 endanger the whole lot. This must be avoided. By working 

 gently and frequently, say, every six years, only removing each 

 time one crown out of, say, six in the upper story, twenty-four 

 years will see the number reduced to half. Under average con- 

 ditions of growth, this is going quite fast enough. As the crop 

 gets older, the proportion to remove becomes less ; after eighty 

 years old it is small ; and in a pure spruce crop, aged one hundred 

 years, there is very little to be done at all in view to its improve- 

 ment, whether it has been previously thinned or not. 



VOL. XVI. PART I. H 



