Methods of Thinning. 105 



cause of the impracticability of introdTicing intensive 

 management. Only lately, owing to improvement in^f 

 prices and the possibility of marketing the inferior"^ 

 material profitably enough to justify the expenditure, 

 has it become possible to secure more generally the ad- 

 vantages of the cultural effect. "Within the last twenty- 

 five years, great activity has been developed among the 

 experiment stations in securing a true basis for the 

 practice of thinning. 



New ideas were introduced through French influence 

 and by others independently in the latter part of the 

 eighties, when the distinction between the final harvest 

 crop (Ft. elite, le haut) and the nurse crop (le has) was 

 introduced.*) 



The physiological basis for the practice of thinning 

 upon experimental grounds, was advanced by the botan- 

 ists Goeppert and E. Hartig, and among foresters, the 

 names of KJraft, Lorey, Haug, Borggreve, Wagener and 

 others are intimately connected with the very active dis- 

 cussion of the subject now going on in the magazines. 

 Thinnings have become such an important part of the 

 income of forest adm i nistrations (25 to 40% of the total 

 yield) that the prominence given to the subject is well 

 justified, and a more modem conception of the advan- 

 tages of thinnings and especially of severer thinnings is 

 gaining ground. 



The proposition, now much ventilated, of severe thin- 

 nings near the end of the rotation, in order to secure 

 an accelerated increment (Lichtungshiebe) is, however, 



The conception of such lubdivision and the English nomenclature was 

 independently first employed by the writer in his Report for 1887, as Chief of 

 Forestry Diyision, when discussing planting plans for the prairies. 



