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needed. Seedlings may be transferred from spots where they 

 stand too densely, to more open or bare places. Suckers 

 should be destroyed where the gain of good timber is an 

 object. Periodic clearing of young trees is effected according 

 to the rate of growth of the particular species; lopping of 

 branches is advisable should they densely meet. For broad- 

 cast sowing, the ground should be completely cleared and 

 burnt. By breaking the ground a great acceleration of 

 growth of the trees is attained, even to a tenfold degree. 

 Planting in rows affords the best access for subsequent thin- 

 ning and successive removal of the timber; the quincunx 

 system will give approach in three directions. Pines are 

 planted in Germany only about 7 feet apart, as they re- 

 quire least room of all trees; but 15 feet is a fair distance at 

 an age of 40 years. The New Hampshire pine stands only 

 5 to 6 feet apart at an age of 50 years, and yet is not 

 prevented by this crowded growth to be then 100 feet high; 

 the stems are then very straight, 18 inches in diameter at the 

 base. If pines and oaks are promiscuously planted, then the 

 former, which act as nurse-trees, are moved in ten or twenty 

 years, and the ground is left to the oak, or any other deciduous 

 tree, at distances at first 10 or 12 feet apart, and subse- 

 quently wider still. No decayed wood is left in planted 

 forests, as it would harbour boring insects. Pines are consid- 

 ered not to increase much in value after 80 years, when 

 most of them have attained full maturity, and grow only 

 afterwards slowly. Sometimes as many as 1200 pine trees 

 are set out on an acre, with a view of early utilisation of a 

 portion of the young trees. The rate of growth may be much 

 accelerated in most trees by irrigation ; hence mountain 

 streamlets should be diverted into horizontal ditches where 

 forests are occupying hill-sides. The best-cultivated forests of 

 Germany are worth from three to five times as much as native 

 woods. 



For shelter plantations, intended to yield ultimately also 

 timber and fuel to farming populations, it is recommendable 

 to adopt the American method, according to which belts of 

 trees are regularly planted at about quarter-mile distance; the 

 belts, according to circumstances, to be from four to ten rods 

 wide, and to be formed in such direction as to front the pre- 

 vailing winds. These timber-belts are usually fenced. Such 

 shelter-trees are likely to rise to thirty feet in ten years, and 

 have proved so advantageous as to double the farm crop, while 

 judicious management of these tree-belts will supply the wood 



