SS6 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part IIL 



already remarked, planting and keeping them as thick as is consistent with their healtli, 

 is tlie best means of producing tall, straight, clean stems, and valuable timber. When 

 planted for screens or for ornament, they require a different treatment ; which will be 

 noticed in the proper place. " To larch plantations, the above observations will also 

 apply, and indeed they are applicable to plantations of all kinds of resinous trees. It 

 may be proper here to remark, that the exposed margin of all young plantations 

 should be kept thicker than the interior. The extent to which this rule should be carried, 

 must be regulated according to the degree of exposure of the situation, the age of 

 the plants, the tenderness of the kinds, and other circumstances." Autumn, or very 

 early in the spring, are the proper seasons for thinning where the trees are to be taken 

 up by the root and replanted elsewhere; winter for thinning for timber and fuel; but 

 such trees as are valuable for their barks should be left untouched till the sap rises in 

 April or May. 



3717. Copse-woods require thinning when young, like other plantations, and when once 

 established the stools require to be gone over the second year after cutting, and all 

 superfluous suckers and shoots removed. This operation should be repeated annually, 

 or every two or three years, in connection with pruning, till within three or four years 

 of the general fall of the crop. 



Sect. VI. Of the Improvement of Neglected Plantations. 



3718. Neglected and mismanaged plantations will include the greater number in Bri- 

 tain. The artificial strips and masses have generally never been thinned or pruned ; 

 and the natural wood or copse-woods improperly thinned or cut over. It is often a 

 difficult matter to know what to make of such cases, and always a work of considerable 

 time. *' Trees," Sang observes, " however hardy their natures may be, which have 

 been reared in a thick plantation, and consequently have been very much sheltered, have 

 their natures so far changed, that if they be suddenly exposed to a circulation of air, 

 which, under different circumstances, would have been salubrious and useful to them, 

 will become sickly and die. Hence the necessity of admitting the air to circulate freely 

 among trees in a thick plantation, only gradually, and with great caution." 



3719. A plantation which has become close and crowded, having been neglected from 

 the time of planting till perhaps its twentieth year, should only have some of the 

 smallest and most unsightly plants removed; one, perhaps, in every six or eight, in the 

 first season ; in the following season, a like number may be removed ; and, in two or three 

 years afterwards, it should be gone over again, and so on, till it be sufficiently thinned. 

 It will be proper to commence the thinning, as above, at the interior of the plantations, 

 leaving the skirts thicker till the last ; indeed, the thinning of the skirts of such a plant- 

 ation should be protracted to a great length of time. With thinning, pruning to a certain 

 extent should also be carried on. " If the plantation," Sang observes, " consists of pines 

 and firs, all the rotten stumps, decayed branches, and the like, must be cut off close by 

 the bole. It will be needful, however, to be cautious not to inflict too many wounds 

 upon the tree in one season ; the removing of these, therefore, should be the work of 

 two or three years, rather than endanger the health of the plantation. After the removal of 

 these from the boles of the firs and larches, proceed every two or three years, but with a 

 sparing hand, to displace one or perhaps two tiers of the lowermost live branches, as 

 circumstances may direct, being careful to cut close by the trunk, as above noticed. In 

 a plantation of hard-wood, under the above circumstances, the trees left for the ultimate 

 crop, are not to be pruned so much at first as might otherwise be required ; only one or 

 two of their competing branches are to be taken away, and even these with caution. If 

 it be judged too much for the first operation to remove them entirely, they may be 

 shortened, to prevent the progress of the competition ; and the remaining parts may 

 be removed in the following season ; at which time, as before observed, they must be cut 

 close by the bole." (Plant. Kal. 467.) 



3720. The ojyeration of thinning and pruning, thickening or filing tip, or renewing 

 portions that cannot be profitably recovered, should thus go on, year after year, as ap- 

 pearances may direct, on the general principles of tree culture. And for this purpose, 

 the attentive observation and reflection of a judicious manager will be worth more than 

 directions which must be given with so much latitude. Pontey has noticed various 

 errors in 



3721. Kennedy's Treatise on Planting, and even in Sang's Xalendar, on the simple 

 subject of distances, which have originated in their giving directions for anticipated 

 cases which had never come within their experience. " Most people," he says, *' take 

 it for granted, that if trees stand three feet apart, they have only to take out the half to 

 make the distances six feet, though to do that, they must take down three times as 

 many as they leave. By the same rule, most people would suppose that twelve feet 



