CHAPTER XV 

 TREE-PRUNING IN ECONOMIC FORESTRY 



WHERE trees are grown for profit, they will, if properly 

 managed, prune themselves, and where for ornament the 

 natural outline is far better than any of the contortions and 

 symmetrical shapes that have been recommended by various 

 writers on the subject. 



A broken or dead branch may be removed, a rival leading 

 shoot cut away, or an ungainly or dangerous limb amputated, 

 but here all pruning should cease, the practice being wholly 

 wrong and unreasonable, and without one recommendation 

 to be adduced in its favour. In an economic way the finest 

 plantations of either coniferous or hard-wooded trees in 

 this country are those where the individual specimens are 

 growing so thickly together that the branches are killed 

 outright for fully one- half of their height. Here the 

 stems will be straight and clean, and the timber when 

 converted free from the knots and warping that are so 

 characteristic either of standard specimens or such as have 

 been grown too thinly on the ground. 



Every one knows that an Oak growing alone or along the 

 margins of a wood is in nine cases out of ten branched almost 

 to the ground, and the bole in consequence rough and ill- 

 fitted for any particular constructive purpose, and the same 

 may be said of every other tree, be it hard-wooded or 

 coniferous. Larch and Scotch Fir trees growing along the 

 margins of plantations are rough and knotty, and sell at a 

 considerably lower figure compared with those further in, 

 where the branches have been killed back gradually as the 

 trees increased in size. 



The same thing is markedly the case in young woods of 



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