FOR YOUNG TREES. 25 



to ask those who contend for the trencliing and 

 taking out of all old roots of trees from any piece 

 of ground previous to having it replanted with other 

 trees, where do we find the best crop of timber 

 trees — in the natural forest or in the cultivated 

 one ? We have only to compare our home planta- 

 tions with the natural forests of America or Nor- 

 way, and we at once find an answer for ourselves. 

 It is a fact well ascertained, that the natural forests 

 upon the continents of Europe and America have, 

 for ages past, produced in succession many crops of 

 heavy timber, and yet we know well that there was 

 no trenching of ground there. Let us cultivate as 

 we will, by trenching or otherwise, we have not yet 

 produced trees in our home woods equal to those 

 in a state of nature ; and the simple reason is, that in 

 the growing of trees in our artificial forests, we are 

 continually aiming too much at what we term cul- 

 tivation. We are always anxious to improve upon 

 nature. This may, indeed, do in many things; but 

 unless we shall follow the direct path which nature 

 points out to us for the growing of forest trees, we 

 most assuredly never will succeed. 



In the natural forest we never find two successive 

 crops of the same species of tree upon the same 

 soil ; by attending to which principle in nature 

 relative to forest trees, a great part of our success 

 in cultivating them in our home woods depends. 

 All that nature requires of us, in order to produce 



