648 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



same ; slight crops of potatoes with sliort tops, or turnips, may be admitted into such 

 plantations with advantage for two or three years, as they create a necessity for annually 

 digging or stirring the surface, and tend very materially to accelerate the growth of the 

 plants. It may be objected, that such crops must impoverish the soil, and no doubt 

 such is the fact, so far as common vegetables are concerned : but as to the production of 

 wood, its support depends, in a great measure, on a different species of nutriment ; and 

 hence, I could never observe, that such cropping damaged it materially." (Profit, 

 Plant, p. 153.) 



3982. Osier plantations, for baskets, willows, and hoops, require digging and cleaning 

 during the whole course of their existence ; and so do hedgerows to a certain extent, 

 and some ornamental plantations. 



^SuBSFXT. 3. Filling up of Blanks or Failures in Plantations. 



3983. TheJUliug up of blanks is one of the first operations that occurs on the culture 

 of plantations, next to the general culture of the soil, and the care of the external fences. 

 According to Sang, " a forest plantation, either in the mass form or ordinary mix- 

 ture, should remain several years after planting, before filling up the vacancies, by the 

 death of the hard-wood plants, takes place. Hard- wood plants, in the first year, and even 

 sometimes in the second year, after planting, die down quite to the surface of the ground, 

 and are apparently dead, while their roots, and the wood immediately above them, are 

 quite fresh, and capable of producing very vigorous shoots, which they frequently do 

 produce, if allowed to stand in their places. If a tree, such as that above alluded to, be 

 taken out the first or second year after planting, and the place filled up with a fresh plant 

 of the same kind, what happened to the former may probably happen to the latter ; and 

 so the period of raising a plant on the spot may be protracted to a great length of time ; 

 or it is possible this object may never be gained. 



39S4. The filing up of the hard-ivood kinds in a plantation which has been planted 

 after trenching or summer fallow, and which has been kept clean by the hoe, may be done 

 with safety at an earlier period than under the foregoing circumstances ; because the 

 trees, in the present case, have greater encouragement to grow vigorously after planting, 

 and may be more easily ascertained to be entirely dead, than where the natural herbage 

 is allowed to grow among them. 



3985. Put the filing up of larches and pines may take place the first spring after the 

 plantation has been made; because such of these trees as have died are more easily 

 distinguished. In many cases where a larch or pine loses its top, either by dying down, 

 or the biting of hares or rabbits, the most vigorous lateral branch is elected by nature to 

 fcupply the deficiency, which by degrees assum.es the character of an original top. Pines, 

 and larches, therefore, which have fresh lateral branches, are not to be displaced, although 

 they have lost their tops. Indeed, no tree in the forest, or other plantation, ought to be 

 removed until there be no hope of its recovery. 



3986. If the filing np f plantations be lef undone till the trees have risen to ff teen or 

 twenty feet in height, their roots are spread far abroad, and their tops occupy a con.^ 

 siderable space. The introduction of two or three plants, from a foot to three feet iu 

 height, at a particular deficient place, can never, in the above circumstances^ be attended 

 with any advantage. Such plants may, indeed, become bushes, and may answer well 

 enough in the character of underwood, but they will for ever remain unfit for any other 

 purpose. It is highly improper then, to commence filling up hard-wood plantations 

 before tlie third year after planting ; or to protract it beyond the fifth or the sixth. March 

 is the proper season for this operation. (Plant. Kal. 295.) 



SuBSECT. 4. Pruning and Heading doivn Trees in Plantations. 



3987. Pruning is the most important operation of tree culture, since on it, in almost 

 every case, depends the ultimate value, and in most cases the actual bulk, of timber pro- 

 duced. For pruning, as for most other practical purposes, the division of trees into 

 resinous or frondose-branchcd trees, and into non-resinous or branchy-headed sorts, is of 

 use. The main object in pruning frondose-branched trees is to produce a trunk with 

 clean bark and sound timber ; that in pruning branchy-stemmed trees is principally to 

 direct the ligneous matter of the tree into the main stem or trunk, and also to produce a 

 clean stem and sound timber, as in the other case. The branches of frondose trees, unless 

 in extraordinary cases, never acquire a timber size, but rot off from the bottom upwards, 

 as the tree advances in height and age ; and, therefore, whether pruned or not, the 

 quantity of timber in the form of trunk is the same. The branches of the other division 

 of trees, however, when left to spread out on every side, often acquire a timber-like 

 size ; and as tiie ligneous matter they contain is in general far from being so valuable 

 as when produced in the form of a straight stem, the loss by not pruning off tlieir side 

 branches or preventing them from acquiring a timber-like size is evident. On the other 

 hand, when they are broken ofl" by accident, or rot oft' by being crowded together, the 



