INTRODUCTION 



TO THE 



AMERICAN EDITION. 



THE Trustees of the Massachusetts Society for the 

 Promotion of Agriculture have intrusted me with the 

 preparation of an American edition of the Count des 

 Cars' treatise on Pruning Forest Trees. 



No comprehensive work on this subject has appeared 

 before in the English language. This, perhaps, is not 

 remarkable. In Great Britain the earlier plantations, 

 largely inspired by the works of Evelyn, were made 

 with the view of ornamenting private parks, and the 

 question of increasing the individual capacity of trees 

 to produce timber by any system of pruning was 

 hardly considered. The economic plantations of later 

 years, made in Scotland and afterwards in England, 

 have been generally composed of coniferous species, 

 which, when properly planted, largely prune them- 

 selves. In America we have been too busy devising 

 methods for cutting down our forests to give serious 

 consideration to other branches of forest economy ; 

 and the American people have yet to show whether 

 they can ever replace the magnificent tree-covering 



