THE MISMANAGEMENT OP WOODLAND. 



293 



per part of the forearm, and receiving the name 

 elbow in the horse as in man. To the elbow are at- 

 tached powerfiil muscles, for extending the limb, and 

 its size is "one of the points looked to by jockeys, as 

 indicative of what is termed action. 



The part termed the knee in the horse corresponds 

 with the wrist of the human arm, and is for this rear 

 son termed carpus. It is composed of seven, and 

 sometimes of eight small bones. These bones serve 

 for the attachment of muscles, and for gixnog flexi- 

 bility 10 the joint. By being many, the weight is 

 divided amongst them, and thus the hazard of frac- 

 ture or dislocation, is lessened. They are separated 

 by elastic cartilage, bound firmly together by liga- 

 ment?, and kept constantly lubricated by a secreted 

 liquid. They form an exceedingly strong and perfect 

 joint, scarcely subject to dislocation of parts, although 

 being the farthest removed from both extremities of 

 the limb, they are at the part of it most apt to be 

 injured. 



The next bones form what is termed the fore-leg 

 of the horse, which consists of three bones, namely 

 the large cannon bone, or shank, with the two smaller 

 splint-bones, as they are called, behind. The splint- 

 bones extend downwards for about two-third parts of 

 the length of the principal bone with which they are 

 united hy a ligamentous matter. This matter tends 

 to become bone, and the ossification extending be- 

 yond the point of union of the bones, there is formed 

 the bony tumour so common in the horse, splint. 



To be continued. 



THE MISMANAGEMENT OF WOODLAND. 



CoMPAEBD with European skill in the manage- 

 ment of forests and woods, onr practices appear 

 equally wasteful and barbarous. We neither take 

 care of the valuable timber which natm-e has so 

 liberally supplied to this continent, nor plant the 

 seeds of forest trees to meet the growing wants of 

 a rapidly increasing population, 'while the wood- 

 lands of the whole countty are scourged, by the 

 unresting axe and by consuming fire. Young cattle, 

 and other stock, lend no feeble aid in the work of 

 dci-troying the undergrowth of woods, which is 

 indispensable to supply the places occupied by old 

 trees that must soon fall to the ground. In short, 

 the mismanagement of woodland is one of the most 

 noticeable defects in American agriculture and 

 public economy. We shall soon have a population 

 of fifty millions, whose system of railways, inland 

 and foreign commerce, love of fine houses, furni- 

 ture, caarriages, and all other articles of luxury and 



utility, made in part or wholly of wood, wiU create 

 an almost unlimited demand for lumber and timber 

 in the United States. 



For several centuries France has contained a 

 dense population, and has corapai-atively little coal 

 for fuel. Hence, both experience and science have 

 co-operated to develop the best methods of pre- 

 serving forests, and the wisest processes for felling 

 trees, (whether to cut all the timber at one time, 

 or to fell only the old and jnatured trees,) and at 

 what season of the year trees ought to be cut to 

 secure the greatest durability to the wood. It ia 

 the practice of the French people not to cut off 

 their woods oftener tlian once in twenty or twenty- 

 five years, and by laic, when cut, the owner is 

 required to cut tJie whole smooth, with the excep- 

 tion of a very few trees which the ofllcers of the 

 government had marked for a larger growth. Ex- 

 perience in this country fully sustains the wisdom 

 of allowing the young growth the full Benefit of 

 sunshine and the natural resources of the soil, un- 

 injured by the shade and great draft on the land 

 by more advanced and much stronger plants. To 

 cut down trees in a scattered manner, as do most 

 Americans, is like attempting to harvest and to 

 grow a crop in the same field and at one and the 

 same time. Many have planted acorns, chestnuts, 

 and other seeds, in thin, open places in woods, in 

 the hope of obtaining a valuable crop of young 

 forest trees. It would have been as wise to plant 

 an apple orchard in the woods as the seeds named, 

 expecting a healthy growth. To obtain the maxi- 

 mum organization of wood on any given area, from 

 year to year, is a problem in vegetable physiology 

 and forest-culture that few have studied in any 

 nation, and perhaps fewemn this than in any other 

 equally advanced in civilization. 



The lion. John Welles, in an able article pub- 

 lished in the Massachusetts Agricultural Reposi- 

 tory, recommends cutting hard- wood trees so soon 

 as they reach the ago of forty or fifty years. He 

 says : " Thougjj trees may shoot up in height by 

 standing longer, yet the period of the most rapid 

 vegetation is mostly over, and by allowing them to 

 stand longer, much of the undergrowth is necessa- 

 rily destroyed." v. - 



Let us assume that one has just cut oflf ten acres 

 of woodland in winter, and that it has sprouted 

 finely in the spring. Dividing the next forty years 

 into four decades, in which will the growth of new 

 wood be the largest? We believe in the second 

 and third, and not in the first nor in the fourth . 



