MIXED HARD-WOOD PLANTATIONS. 155 



timber growing eighty feet high and not more than 

 twenty feet tree from tree ; while upon the other 

 hand, in a Hght poor thin soil, I have seen trees 

 not thirty feet high, scarcely able to maintain exis- 

 tence although they were standing twenty feet one 

 from another. But upon a moderate calculation, 

 and upon a soil of moderate capabilities, one half 

 the height of the trees may be reckoned as a fair 

 distance at which one tree should stand from 

 another, at all stages of their growth, after they 

 have received their first course of thinning. 



I here beg to caution all who have not had 

 thorough practical experience of their own, not to 

 be guided by any universal rule of distance which 

 one tree should stand from another, in the act of 

 thinning. The great point to attend to is, to keep 

 the trees, at all stages of their growth, after the 

 first thinning has taken place, merely free one 

 from another, in the top branches — not to allow the 

 trees to grow so closely together as to be drawn 

 up weakly in the boll, nor to be allowed so much 

 room in the forest as to spread out their branches 

 horizontally, and take up too much space in the 

 plantation. 



If the plantation have thriven well, it is hkely 

 that, at thirty years of age, a few of the hard-wood 

 trees may require to be taken out, in order to re- 

 lieve others of more value, and which may have 

 grown more rapidly ; and in the same manner, a 



