THINNING OF ADVANCED HARDWOOD PLANTATIONS. 175 



the case we have ample proof; for here there are 

 hundreds of trees as bare as poles, with only a tuft of 

 branches on the top, which have had ample room for 

 over twenty years to develop their side branches, had 

 it been in the order of nature to do so. Some trees 

 as the oak do make a strenuous effort to repro- 

 duce their lateral branches ; but when the effort at 

 all succeeds, it is by spray emanating from the stem, 

 and not the development of the existing branches, 

 which rather degenerate than enlarge, so that what is 

 gained of growth on the one hand is more than lost 

 on the other. It is very difficult to know how to 

 treat a plantation successfully that has once been 

 seriously neglected in thinning. Cutting down and 

 allowing a new crop to grow from the stools is some-* 

 times recommended ; but this plan is attended with at 

 least one very serious objection namely, the circum- 

 stance that the scion springing from an old stool produces 

 a tree in character, form, and habit exactly the same as 

 that from which it springs. A dwarfed and stunted tree 

 reproduces dwarfed and stunted trees, crooked and 

 deformed ones the same, like reproducing like all 

 through, a circumstance which, though of the greatest 

 consequence, most foresters have never given any 

 attention to. 



Unless trees are quite sound and healthy, no lateral 

 satisfactory growth will ever take place by thinning. 

 There is something, also, very remarkable about cer- 

 tain tree-roots in the manner in which they remain 

 vital after being severed from the stem. I know 

 several old stools still vital from which the trees had 

 been cut more than thirty years previous. How they 

 continue vital year after year and yet produce no 

 shoots has hitherto been quite a mystery, but appears 



