334 



THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



Nature's 

 method of thin- 

 ning to be imi- 

 tated in forest 

 management. 



Wrong systems 

 of thinning. 



Productive of 

 coarse, worth- 

 less timber. 



Thinning is a most important operation, which the careful 

 observation of Nature's method alone can teach. It has been the 

 subject too often of mistakes and misunderstanding. The object 

 being to get the most valuable timber, and not coarse, worthless, 

 loose-grained stuff, the seedlings must be allowed to grow a head, 

 and not interfered with until the master trees have fought out 

 their battle for life and killed down the weaker ones. 



In Highwood forest, where the seedlings grow very close 

 together, or where planting has been at 3 feet apart, the first thin- 

 ning will amount merely to taking out the dead poles, perhaps 

 at the thirtieth year. The complete canopy must be preserved 

 overhead, which draws up the young trees lean and straight, 

 until they attain nearly their full height and are standing about 

 6 feet apart, or 1,200 to the acre. The thinnings will then 

 take place at intervals of thirty years, care being taken to keep 

 the trees growing on in height. Finally, they are thinned out to 

 12 feet apart, or 200 to the acre, and then they begin to thicken, 

 which goes on for the rest of their time, either 100 or 120 years. 

 One hundred trees per acre is sometimes sufficient for the final 

 crop. 



In countries where schools of scientific forestry do not exist, 

 and where neither owner nor forester knows on what system or 

 rotation he is working, or what was the mind of the original 

 planter — perhaps long since dead — thinning is usually conducted 

 after a method, or rather no method, which is entirely wrong. 

 The ideas inculcated are to thin out freely and give plenty of room, 

 in order that the trees may grow as fast as possible and develop 

 fine heads. Leaves are the lungs of the tree, by which it imbibes 

 carbon from the air and builds up its stern, so that abundant 

 foliage produces rapid thickening long before the stems have 

 cleaned themselves of knots, and the annual rings or layers of 

 fibre are put on so coarsely and thick that the timber will be 

 loose-grained and worthless. When after some years the un- 

 educated forester comes round, he marks these well-grown trees 

 as fit to cut, and the owner congratulates himself on having so 

 great a bulk of timber to sell. But the purchaser finds them 

 half sap and dozed at the roots, and unfit for joiners' work, upon 

 which he gives a very small price. And sage opinions are pro- 

 nounced that good deal or pine cannot be grown in Great 



