IMPROVEMENT THINNING. 



Is Thinning Practicable? 



There are many owners of woodlands who doubt the prac- 

 ticability of improvement thinning. They say that, while 

 benefits may result to the stand, the cost of the work is 

 prohibitive. Of course improvement thinnings are out of 

 the question back in the Maine or Michigan woods, but with 

 the market conditions which exist in most parts of Massachu- 

 setts they are practicable. The writer knows of cases where 

 they have been executed at from 10 cents to $2 net gain per 

 cord, where the market was from eight to two and one-half 

 miles from the woods. At one place it was asserted posi- 

 tively by the owner that the work would not pay ; but when 

 it was done it was found that the cost was $1.25 per cord, 

 and that the product sold on the ground for $1.50 and $1.75 

 per cord. 



Another objection sometimes urged is, that the trees to 

 be removed will lodge on other trees, so that they cannot 

 be gotten down ; or that they will break and injure other 

 trees, in falling, to such an extent as to offset the improve- 

 ment gained. The writer has in mind a stand of pine and 

 a stand of spruce in New Hampshire, where this argument 

 was used against the proposed thinning. The argument was 

 answered by putting a few men at the work, and thinning 

 sample areas. When it was done it was found that the re- 

 maining trees had not been broken to any extent in either 

 stand, not even in the pine, which was more liable to 

 breakage ; and that no trees had remained lodged in either 

 stand, not even in the spruce, which was a very close 

 stand of slender poles, that were especially liable to lodge 

 against the remaining trees. 



When the thing has been done, and at a net gain, the 

 time has passed for contending that it is impracticable. 



II. THE THEORY or THINNING. 



The principle which underlies the practice of thinning 

 is to be found in the struggle for existence and the survival 

 of the fittest. If we plant an acre in pine trees, for exam- 

 ple, at a distance of six feet apart each way, or if an acre is 



