CHAPTER X. 



PRUNING. 



A FARMER in Strathspey planted some larcli trees 

 around his garden when he was a boy. The trees in 

 time grew up, and the branches overhung his garden, 

 suggesting pruning, which he did. Two of the num- 

 ber, not overhanging so much as the rest, were left 

 unpruned; and at the present time, when the trees 

 are seventy-one years old, the unpruned trees are more 

 healthy, and contain more than double the quantity of 

 timber than the others. If the branches of single-grown 

 healthy larch are foreshortened moderately, it will do 

 little or no harm, but evidently no good can arise from 

 pruning in any form to unhealthy or diseased trees, 

 unless perhaps in cases where blasting winds have 

 destroyed the vitality of the ends of the branches : in 

 such cases snag pruning will induce fresh shoots, or at 

 all events remove the unsightly dead parts of the 

 branches. 



- Some foresters attribute much of the larch failure 

 to confinement of the trees, keeping them so close to- 

 gether as to destroy the vitahty of their lower branches. 

 To this view there appears scarcely room for division 



