MIXED HARD-WOOD PLANTATIONS. 157 



plantations consisting of hard-wood and firs, mixed 

 and growing together in the proportions formerly 

 mentioned, which had never been thinned up to the 

 time that I examined them — and they were then 

 tliirty years old. The hard-wood plants were then 

 about ten feet high, and from two to three inches in 

 diameter ; and the firs, which had grown rapidly, 

 were large, massy trees, fully thirty feet high. Upon 

 consideration, I concluded that no remedy could be 

 used in order to recover the hard-wood plants, seeing 

 they had been so much stunted and crushed down. 

 There was, indeed, one way in which the hard-wood 

 trees might have been made to grow to advantage, 

 but it must have been at the expense of the firs ; but 

 as they were good trees, tlie operation would have 

 been a decided loss to the proprietor. The only way 

 to have saved them would have been, to have cut 

 them all down to the ground, and to have made them 

 all spring from the root afresh ; but in order to 

 have given them a proper recovery, one half of the 

 firs must have been sacrificed. In several instances 

 where I have had to deal with plantations consisting 

 entirely of hard-wood plants, so old, and so much 

 drawn up together from the want of thinning, that 

 they had actually become mere poles of thirty feet 

 high, and not more than four inches diameter, I 

 have cut the whole plantation over to the surface of 

 the ground, because thinning was out of the ques- 

 tion ; and in such cases, I have had an excellent 



