84 PLANTATIONS. 



A Plantation which should be subjected, at so 

 early a stage of its existence as ten or fifteen years, 

 to the ordeal of both these classes of errors, could 

 have but little chance of succeeding : it could not 

 be expected to make any more than very slow 

 progress after such treatment as this : and yet this 

 is exactly the way in which many Plantations are 

 managed, at all stages of their growth. I have 

 recently met with a splendid Larch Plantation, 

 which has never been thinned, from the first, 

 except by "fits and starts"; of which injudicious 

 treatment, 1 could see very serious " outward and 

 visible signs." Although it is upon exceedingly 

 weak and poor land, it would have produced, if it 

 had been properly managed, a fine class of Larch- 

 es, which would have yielded to the proprietor an 

 abundant return upon nis outlay. If any one 

 doubt this, let him look around and see if he can- 

 not find a Plantation of forty or fifty years growth, 

 which is crowded with trees say of Larch only 

 and he will, upon examination, perceive that there 

 are two or three distinct classes of trees still stand- 

 ing, all of which ought, long before, to have been 

 taken out; and that there is but one class of 



