96 THE NATURE AND NECESSITY OF 



mended to cut down at once, drain, and replant the 

 ground. However, I may here mention, that if the 

 situation be a rather sheltered one, and the soil dry, 

 a recovery of an over-thinned plantation will often 

 take place, although the trees, after having been 

 checked, will never attain that size they would have 

 done had they been otherwise treated ; but where 

 the situation is exposed, and the natural soil cold 

 and damp, recovery is out of the question. 



Upon the other hand, where plantations are 

 not enough thinned, the trees become drawn up 

 weakly, and seldom attain the size of useful tim- 

 ber before maturity comes upon them. And where 

 any plantation has stood long in a state without 

 being thinned, particularly a fir plantation, it is, 

 I may say, impossible to recover it ; for if even a 

 very few trees be thinned out, a number of others, 

 from the Avant of their shelter, are sure to die, 

 wliich ultimately causes blanks to occur here and 

 there, and the wind getting play in such blanks, 

 great havoc is often done among the trees during 

 a storm. As an instance of this, I may here men- 

 tion, that upon the estate of Arniston, a fir planta- 

 tion of above thirty years' standing, and to the 

 extent of nearly forty acres, had been allowed to 

 grow on in its natural state from the time that 

 it was planted up to the period stated, when an 

 attempt was made to take a few trees out of it, 

 by way of thinning it gradually ; and this having 



