THE NEW FORESTRY. l6l 



foresters is particularly drawn to Plates Nos. I and 3, showing 

 the beginning and end of the rotation period. The idea 

 held tenaciously by foresters in this country is that if a young 

 plantation is allowed to become as crowded up to twenty or 

 thirty years of age, as shown in No. I, the trees can never 

 afterwards produce good timber or be healthy. Yet the plate 

 represents the general condition of a young fir forest of the 

 above age, or older, and for that part of it, of hard-woods also, 

 under good management ; and No. 3 shows what such a plan- 

 tation becomes at maturity, or at the end of the rotation 

 period one hundred years. The trees in No. 3 run from 

 one hundred to ,one hundred and twenty feet in height, and 

 average about one hundred cubic feet in bulk of trunk, pro- 

 ducing fine, clean, white deal that is used for a great variety 

 of purposes. The engraving shows the edge of a " clear 

 cut," and the trees are not marginal specimens but grown up 

 in dense forest from the beginning. What the exact weight 

 of crop might be we did not ascertain, but a glance at the 

 number of trees on the ground showed that it must be enor- 

 mous. No. 3 shows but a short stretch of forest, throughout 

 the same, and a practical forester will form a very good idea 

 from the plate how much timber an acre is likely to contain.* 

 In proceeding to thin any forest compartment for the first 

 time (Plate 2) the German forester simply clears out the dead 

 and dominated or smothered trees, afterwards collecting the 

 small and worst for firewood, and putting rails and small poles 

 aside for stakes and fencing purposes. The second thinning is 

 regulated on the same principle as the first, but it is seldom 

 executed till the trees have reached small pole dimensions of 

 from two-and-a-half to three and four feet the firs being- 

 peeled by the axe in the forest and prepared for delivery to 

 the consumer. The period between the first and second 

 thinnings depends on the progress of the trees, but in any case 

 a period usually elapses during which, in a plantation on an 

 English estate, several thinnings would have been carried 

 out, and the thinnings been of so little value as hardly to 

 defray the expense of removal. Thinning repetitions are 

 conducted on the same principle throughout until the end of 



* Plate 14 shows a Scotch wood, of denser growth than usual, and affording 

 a useful comparison with No. 3. 

 II 



