ioo ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



texture; and this is the timber which commands the top 

 price in the market. For joinery work especially this latter 

 quality is of the first importance. Fir timber of uniform 

 texture does not warp or shrink unequally in drying, and 

 warping is a fatal fault in the joiner's eyes, An examination 

 of any high-class deal joinery reveals the fact that the 

 timber used in it is composed of extremely narrow rings so 

 narrow in many cases that fifty or more will be found in an 

 inch of cross section. This uniformity, or narrowness of 

 ring-breadth, together with freedom from knots, means that 

 the tree or trees from which the timber has been cut were 

 of slow growth and considerable size and age. Ring- 

 breadth and diameter -growth are one and the same thing, 

 and freedom from knots means that the timber was taken 

 from a part of the tree some distance away from the pith 

 or centre, for it is in the neighbourhood of the pith that 

 knots are situated, and no tree can be grown without them. 

 An ideal pine for joinery work is one, therefore, which 

 possesses a timber bole containing the greatest proportion of 

 knot-free wood made up of narrow rings. 



To produce such timber, the trees must be grown ex- 

 tremely close, so that the side branches are killed off to the 

 desired height at the earliest possible stage, and allowed to 

 stand until a great age, in order to obtain the desired 

 dimensions ; and this is only possible on poor soils, because 

 the better the soil the faster the growth, and the quicker 

 the individual trees assert their supremacy, and secure crown 

 room for themselves by smothering their weaker neighbours. 

 On poor soils growth all round is less vigorous, and side 

 branches will be both smaller at a given age and more 

 easily killed off by a given amount of shade than in 

 fast-growing trees. Now it is impossible in practice to 

 grow every tree in a plantation of the desired size and 

 quality. Individual growth is always varying, and, if it 

 were not so, crowding would ultimately destroy the entire 

 crop before it reached a useful size ; for the farther the crown 

 is cleaned up, as will be seen under " Thinning," the smaller 

 the supply of sap available for the roots. In any plantation 

 not artificially thinned, therefore, a certain proportion of in- 

 dividuals will be found with the remains of side branches 



