r VIII ] 



we can develop the desired forms more easily and sucessfully, by 

 leaving a much greater number of trees than are eventually to 

 remain, and removing from year to year all which are near enough 

 to the final occupants to check or impede their full development. 



If, on the other hand, we wish to develop the trunk or bole for 

 use as timber we must plant, or suffer the trees to grow more 

 thickly together, and thus extend its trunk longitudinally by forcing 

 it to ascend in search of the sunlight on which its very existence is 

 dependent. The indigenous growth, however, is always a great deal 

 too thick for successful development. The trees are so crowded 

 that many of them perish in the struggle, and those which survive 

 are drawn up into such spindling proportions that not one in a 

 hundred ever attains the dignity of timber, whereas by proper and 

 reasonable thinning, and judicious culture and pruning of the trees 

 selected for final retention, every acre of woodland might be made 

 to yield an annual crop of fire- wood, and all the while be growing 

 timber which eventually in many instances might be worth more 

 than the land itself; or by a different process of management may 

 be converted into a grove of majestic and graceful, ornamental trees. 



The proper performance of this work constitutes the most impor- 

 tant part of forest culture and for want of the knowledge of how it 

 should be done, or from ignorance of the possibility of its applica- 

 tion to our native forest, a vast area (in the aggregate) of woodland 

 is running to waste ; yielding no revenue and promising nothing 

 better in the future than fire-wood, of which a very large propor- 

 tion is yet susceptible of redemption and conversion into timber of 

 great value at far less cost of time and labor than would be required 

 for the planting and rearing of new forests, while the very process 

 of development would be yielding an annual income instead of 

 demanding large outlays. 



Travel where we may we are never out of sight of forest, and 

 every wood lot is a mine of wealth waiting only the application of 

 intelligent labor for its development. In almost every tract of wood- 

 land may be found more or less of the trees I have named and in 

 many places also hickory, walnut, butternut, elm, cherry, beech and 

 other valuable timber trees, mingled with a great variety of those 

 which are worthless, or fit only for fuel. In some cases they are 

 past redemption, having been so long neglected that they have run 

 up into mere thickets of hooppoles. Young growth may everywhere 

 be found, however, which are in condition to be taken in hand, and 

 in almost all cases the work of thinning, and pruning may be 

 entered upon with a certainty of profitable results if wisely and 

 perseveringly conducted. 



The work of thinning, as ordinarily conducted in the occasional 

 instances in which on any account it has become desirable, is en- 

 trusted to mere laborers, who have no regard for the natural condi- 

 tions which are essential to healthy growth, and which can not be 

 suddenly changed, without serious injury to the trees that are left. 



All the small growth of shrubs, such as hazel, cornel, dogwood, 

 elder, shad-bush, etc., is first grubbed out and destroyed under the 

 general term of "underbrush," and this not only throughout the 

 interior of the wood, but round its outer edges where such shrubbery 

 is apt to spring up in thickets, which serve the very important pur- 



