278 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



jected to rational treatment from the very time 

 of their formation onwards, because good pre- 

 sent and future management is not of itself, in 

 many cases, able to correct the mistakes of the 

 past. Plantations made at wide distances, such 

 as 6 feet by 6 feet for larch, pine, or spruce, 

 though below normal density up to fifteen or 

 twenty years of age, may, if simply left to grow 

 as they like, become crowded at twenty to thirty 

 years of age. In such cases the crowding would 

 be solely due to excessive development of branches, 

 and not to any excessive number of stems per 

 acre. Errors of this sort can of course be re- 

 medied to a certain extent by thinning. It is 

 also true that thinning is not merely the best 

 means it is often, indeed, the only possible 

 means of tending timber crops ; but the damage 

 done to timber in Britain by injudicious thinning 

 throughout the last hundred years might probably 

 be moderately assessed at many millions of pounds 

 sterling. 



In the case of many of the older woods the 

 damage thus done has been so great that but 

 little can now be suggested except to harvest the 

 over-mature, the most branching, and the least 



