118 THE NATURE AND PRACTICE 



but in the case of mismanagement in a forester, the 

 work of past years is lost, and thirty or forty years, 

 with a considerable outlay of extra money, may pos- 

 sibly not bo sufficient to redeem what is put wrong. 



Having given the above example of mismanage- 

 ment, in order to point out the necessity of using 

 caution in entering upon pruning operations, I shall 

 now proceed to give a few examples of the manner 

 in which I have gone to work in similar cases of 

 neglected plantations ; and I am convinced that, 

 wherever plantations have been neglected as to 

 pruning, if they are under thirty years old, they 

 may, if dealt with as I shall here point out, be 

 recovered, so far as to make profitable timber trees, 

 although probably not to that extent of value that 

 might have been expected had the same trees been 

 properly pruned and trained up in their young 

 state. 



When I came to act as forester upon the estate 

 of Arniston, I found that many of the hard-wood 

 plantations under thirty years old had never been 

 pruned at all, and that there was great need for 

 means being used as quickly as possible, to put 

 such into proper state. In setting about this part 

 of our forest operations, I determined to begin with 

 the younger part of the woods, as being most likely 

 to recover quickly, and to be of the most value 

 ultimately if taken in due time, and to go on with 

 the pruning of the older districts of plantations 



