THINNING AND PRUNING 145 



carried out on a large scale. Both he and Monteath advo- 

 cate a great deal of practice, which would answer fairly well 

 in a plantation of 5 or 10 acres, and with a staff of men 

 which occasionally ran out of a job now and then. But in 

 large woods, and in these days of dear labour, it would be 

 better for the woodland proprietor to grow less valuable 

 timber than to incur the great expense of extensive pruning, 

 which depends for its proper execution upon the skill and 

 care of the individual workman more than anything else. 



Brown, the author of The Forester, devotes about twenty 

 pages to pruning, and bases his arguments for its necessity on 

 examples of neglected or over-thin plantations, and mixed 

 woods in which hardwoods have been suppressed. As might 

 be expected, his views are certainly more rational and up-to- 

 date than those of the authorities cited above. He regards 

 pruning as much an essential as thinning, and evidently 

 considers that the two should go on hand in hand. Par- 

 ticular attention is paid to the pruning of oak woods, or 

 those in which oak predominates amongst the hardwoods, 

 commencing when the trees are from 5 to 8 feet high, cut- 

 ting off all branches not exceeding two-thirds of an inch 

 close to the stem for about one-third of the height of the 

 tree. The large branches were then to be shortened back to 

 within 4 inches of the stem, and all large top branches to 

 about half their length until nothing but the leader was left. 

 In two years' time the plantation was gone through again, and 

 all the stumps left on at the first pruning taken off. From 

 time to time the plantation was gone through in the same 

 way, cutting off all for about one-third of the height of the 

 tree, and shortening back strong shoots likely to compete 

 with the leader. 



No fault can be found with the above from a cultural 

 point of view. But the fact is either ignored or lost sight 

 of, that the necessity for pruning can be avoided in a great 

 measure by sylvicultural mixtures, or maintaining the crop 

 at a proper density. The old idea was that close order meant 

 the ruin of the crop, and a forester, even as late as forty or 

 fifty years ago, would have been horrified at a thick planta- 

 tion of forty or fifty years of age consisting of long clean 

 poles. The usual remedy applied to such a crop would have 



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