14 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
his charge, a number that corresponds to what we are accustomed 
to in Germany. 
The main difference in the management of woods in Scotland 
and in Germany is found in the manner of thinning. The 
specimens of thinning that I met with at Dunkeld, Scone, and 
Airthrey were entirely opposed to what we would consider good 
practice in Germany. . It was therefore a greater pleasure to find 
that Mr Thomson practised and recommended a system more in 
consonance with scientific principles. It seemed to me during 
my short visit, that woods are greatly over-thinned in Scotland, 
and are too much managed like the trees in a park. The great 
mistake that Scottish foresters make is to start thinning too 
early, in order to give the trees sufficient room to develop large 
crowns, and to grow rapidly in thickness. The object would 
appear to be an attempt to induce the woods to furnish some 
saleable produce, such as sleepers, at the earliest possible age. 
However desirable early returns may be from thg joint of view 
of the landlord or of the forester, the fact must not be lost sight 
of that they are obtained at a great sacrifice. Trees grown in 
woods managed in this way have not the opportunity to clean their 
stems naturally of dead branches, and therefore it is necessary to 
incur considerable expenditure on artificial pruning—an opera- 
tion which is practically out of the question on a large scale. 
The thinnings obtained at a very early age are of such poor 
quality as to be of little or no value. Growth in height is inter- 
fered with to an extraordinary extent, and the production of a 
well-shaped bole becomes almost an impossibility. Further, when 
a wood is thinned to its utmost extent it does not contain a 
reserve supply of trees to serve as substitutes for those that 
have lost their leaders, or are otherwise defective. This matter is 
of special importance in Scotland, where the squirrel does an 
amount of damage to trees that is unknown in Germany: in 
consequence of the removal of the bark from the upper part of the 
stems, the trees develop misshapen crowns, and are greatly 
reduced in value. Had we a plague of squirrels in Germany such 
as is found in Scotland, we should set about reducing the numbers 
by diligent shooting. 
It cannot be too much emphasised that strong and early thin- 
ning prevents the production of the maximum mass of timber, 
and at the same time makes the formation of valuable timber 
impossible. If the commencement of strong thinning were 
