654 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



plantations, the above observations will also apply, and indeed they are applicable to 

 plantations of all kinds of resinous trees. 



4019. The exposed margin of all young plantations should be kept thicker than the in- 

 terior. The extent to which this rule should be carried must be regulated according to 

 the degree of exposure of the situation, the age of the plants, the tenderness of the kinds, 

 and other circumstances." 



4020. The proper season for thinning is autumn, or very early in the spring, where 

 the trees are to be taken up by the root and replanted elsewhere ; winter for thinning 

 for timber and fuel : but such trees as are valuable for their barks should be left un- 

 touched till the sap rises in April or May. 



4021. Copse-woods require thinning when young, like other plantations, and when once 

 established the stools require to be gone over the second year after cutting, and all 

 superfluous suckers and shoots removed. This operation should be repeated annually, 

 or every two or three years, in connection with pruning, till within three or four years 

 of the general fall of the crop. 



Sect. VI. Improvement of Neglected Plantations. 



4022. Neglected and mismanaged plantations will include the greater number in Bri- 

 tain. The artificial strips and masses have generally never been thinned or pruned ; 

 and the natural woods, or copse-woods, have for the most part been improperly thinned 

 or cut over. It is often a difficult matter to know what to make of such cases, and 

 always a work of considerable time. " Trees," Sang observes, " however hardy their 

 natures may be, which have been reared in a thick plantation, and consequently have 

 been very much sheltered, have their natures so far changed, that, if they be suddenly 

 exposed to a circulation of air, which, under different circumstances, would have been 

 salubrious and useful to them, they will become sickly and die. Hence the necessity 

 of admitting the air to circulate freely among trees in a thick plantation, only gradually, 

 and with great caution." This precaution is particularly necessary in thinning plant- 

 ations of Scotch pine. Trees which have been screened by each other for forty or 

 fifty years, cannot bear the loss of their near neighbours. 



4023. A plantation which has become close and crowded, having been neglected from 

 the time of planting till perhaps its twentieth year, should only have some of the 

 smallest and most unsightly plants removed ; one, perhaps in every six or eight, in the 

 first season ; in the following season, a like number may be removed ; and in two or three 

 years afterwards, it should be gone over again ; and so on till it be sufficiently thinned. 

 It will, be proper to commence the thinning at the interior of the plantations, leaving 

 the skirts thicker till the last ; indeed, the thinning of tlie skirts of such a plantation 

 should be protracted to a great length of time. With thinning, pruning to a certain 

 extent should also be carried on. " If the plantation," Sang observes, " consists of pines 

 and firs, all the rotten stumps, decayed branches, and the like, must be cut off" close by 

 the bole. It will be needful, however, to be cautious not to inflict too many wounds 

 upon the tree in one season ; the removing of these, therefore, should be the work of 

 two or three years, rather than endanger the health of the plantation. After the removal 

 of these from the boles of the firs and larches, proceed every two or three years, but with 

 a sparing hand, to displace one or perhaps two tiers of the lowermost live branches, as 

 circumstances may direct, being careful to cut close by the trunk, as above noticed. In 

 a plantation of hard wood, under the above circumstances, the trees left for the ultimate 

 crop are not to be pruned so much at first as might otherwise be required ; only one or 

 two of their competing branches are to be taken away, and even these with caution. If 

 it be judged too much for the first operation to remove them entirely, they may be 

 shortened, to prevent the progress of the competition ; and the remaining parts may be 

 removed in the following season ; at which time, as before observed, they must be cut 

 close by the bole. {Plant. Kal. 467.) We cannot agree to that part of these directions 

 which respects the removal of " perhaps two tiers of the lowermost live branches ;" but, 

 paying great deference to the opinion of Mr. Sang, we have judged it right, in a work 

 of this nature, to lay it before our readers, and allow them to judge for themselves. 



4024. The operation of thinning and pruning, thickening or filling up, or renewing portions that 

 cannot be profitably recovered, should thus go on, year after year, as appearances may direct, on the 

 general principles of tree culture ; and for this purpose, the attentive observation and reflection of a 

 judicious manager will be worth more than directions which must be given with so much latitude. 



4025. Pontey has noticed various errors in Kennedy's Treatise on Planting, and even in Sang's Kalen- 

 dar, on the simple subject of distances, which have originated in their giving directions for anticipated 

 cases which had never come within their experience. " Most people," he says, " take it for granted, 

 that if trees stand three feet apart, they have only to take out the half to make the distances six feet, 

 though, to do that, they must take down three times as many as they leave. By the same rule, most 

 people would suppose that twelve feet distance was only the double of six ; but the square of the latter 

 is only thirty-six, while that of the former is one hundred and forty-four, or four times the latter ; so 

 that, to bring six feet distances to twelve, three trees must be removed for every one left." {Profitable 

 Planter, 256 j and Forest Pruner, 21.) 



