284 



CHAPTEE VIII. 



EXPERIMENTS IN PRUNING. 



FINDING that pruning diminishes, or at least prevents, 

 the increase of wood in proportion to the quantity of 

 branches removed, the writer has devoted considerable 

 time and labour to find out, as far as possible, what 

 proportion of branches a well-balanced tree ought to 

 have, in order to make wood, at the most desirable and 

 satisfactory rate, neither too hard nor too soft, too fast 

 nor too slow grown ; and in order to do this, he took 

 along with himself two practical foresters, and went 

 into an extensive natural forest as well as into several 

 plantations, and selected choice specimens of larch, 

 Scots pine, and Norway spruce. In making the selec- 

 tion, some trees were chosen which were considered 

 perfect in all their parts and proportions ; some, again, 

 that were thought to have too few branches, some too 

 tall in proportion to their girth, and others too thick 

 for their height. These conditions, be it observed, were 

 unanimously agreed upon, and written down before 

 the tree to which they referred was cut, pruned, dis- 

 sected, and weighed. The other details were added, 

 as shown in the subjoined table. 



The annexed table will illustrate the conditions 

 under which true forest-trees should be grown at their 



