184 Studies in Forestry [CHAP. ix. 



or where small poles are required for pea-sticks, hop-growing, 

 and the like, they should cease to be requisite before the crop 

 enters on the period of its most active growth in height as 

 pole-forest. Under such circumstances thinnings should begin 

 early, and may often prove highly remunerative. 



From the purely financial point of view the results attainable 

 by weeding and clearing are commensurate with the ultimate 

 disadvantages that may probably, and, as continental experience 

 has shown, will almost invariably, accrue, if such cultural 

 measures be neglected. Of these the principal include danger 

 from accumulations of snow and ice, ravages by insects finding 

 a suitable breeding-place in sickly, suppressed, or dominated 

 saplings, and diseases of roots and stems occasioned by fungi 

 like Trametes, Agaricus^ &c. Neglect of these early measures 

 of tending leads in a very short time to dissipation of the 

 vital energy of the crop, to the overstocking of the area with 

 an excessive number of individual stems of small technical or 

 financial value, to the crowding out and suppression of the more 

 valuable trees by kinds of less value, and ultimately to the 

 necessity of clearance and utilization of the crop at a date 

 much earlier than its technical and commercial maturity would 

 otherwise have been indicated financially. 



Wherever reliable data may exist for a comparison of the 

 ultimate returns obtained from two different crops grown on 

 similar soils and situations, and both formed by similar 

 methods, though subjected to essentially different treatment 

 during the early stages of growth, it will invariably be found 

 that, when a less valuable species or individual has been 

 allowed to interfere with the development of a more valuable, 

 on comparison of the net ultimate returns from the mature 

 crop plus all the intermediate returns from thinnings, capital- 

 ized up to the time of utilization of the two mature falls of 

 timber, then the capitalized outlay on weedings and clearings 

 can be proved to have been money very well laid out 

 simply as a further investment of capital. 



