THINNING YOUNG HAKDWOOD PLANTATIONS. 203 



estate, in Selkirkshire, grown on the highest ridge of 

 a hill about 500 feet altitude. The plantation was 

 partly mixed and partly in groups, and was rather 

 severely thinned at the time of making that branch of 

 the North British Railway between Ha wick and Edin- 

 burgh, part of the sleepers of which were cut out of 

 this plantation. The thinning produced such an un- 

 favourable influence upon the remaining crop, that on 

 cross-cutting any of the remaining trees, the year in 

 which the thinning took place can be still accurately 

 counted. It was not the first season's growth, but the 

 second, third, and so on, that was most unfavourably 

 influenced by the thinning. The first year's growth 

 immediately succeeding the thinning was thicker than 

 those succeeding it, and up to twenty years it had not 

 recovered the shock it sustained ; and by the time 

 it would do so, according to the current events of 

 nature, the tree would in all likelihood have succumbed 

 to disease or premature decay. 



In Sussex, Kent, and other hop-pole-growing dis- 

 tricts, a common practice is to ring with paint a 

 number of select trees at each periodic cutting of the 

 underwood, to grow up as standard timber trees. The 

 intervals between the cuttings of the underwood vary 

 from ten to sixteen years, and when the trees that 

 have been thus grown are cut down, at whatever age, 

 the date of the cutting of the underwood can be easily 

 ascertained by counting the rings or layers ; and it is 

 almost invariably found that the increased thickness of 

 the layer varies according to the growth of the under- 

 wood, being always least about the second year after 

 cutting, and by degrees regains thickness till another 

 cutting of underwood takes place, and so on throughout. 

 This variation of growth in the rings is quite distinct to 



