ACCOUNT GIVEN BY BOITEL. 49 



" It is remarked that the pines most loaded with branches and with 

 leaves are those which give the greatest bulk of wood and the most 

 abundant crops of resin. Notwithstanding this, pruning, objection- 

 able in theory, becomes useful in certain peculiar cases. If there be 

 seedlings with too much space around them, shooting out more in 

 circumference than in height, and loading themselves with heavy and 

 vigorous lateral couronnes, which absorb the greater part of the sap, 

 then there is removed gradually the lower branches in order to 

 concentrate the sap upon the stem, which is the part of the tree 

 which it is of most importance to cause to increase in size and in 

 length. As for sowings which are sufficiently stocked, instead of 

 employing pruning to force the trees to shoot upwards, it is now ad- 

 vantageous to get the same result by moderating the thinning, and 

 leaving on the ground as many trees as may be necessary to induce 

 development in height, and one knows not how sufficiently to 

 blame proprietors who, giving no attention to their seedlings for 

 eight or ten years, all at once subject the reserved trees to a 

 vigorous thiiming, accompanied by an excessive Uaqage or prun- 

 ing. This great mutilation, joined to a too immediate action of 

 air and light, occasions a state of disease, from the injurious effects 

 of which the pinery suffers throughout the whole period of its 

 growth. 



'' Elagage is also proper on grown up pines, the lower couronnes of 

 which, enfeebled by age, finally die and fall, leaving long stumps, 

 which, in decaying, produce in the wood perforations which diminish 

 much its value. This serious inconvenience is avoided by prunino- 

 away at a proper time languishing and dying boughs ; and, in place 

 of cutting them off close to the stem, leaving a stump 5 to 6 centi- 

 mHres, or 2 and 2^ inches long. 



" Such spikes, hardened by the action of resin which accumulates 

 in them, embody themselves without difficulty in the trunks, and 

 produce no other inconvenience than that of obstructing the tools in 

 the working up of the wood. Spikes in parts of the trunk destined 

 to be tapped for resin should not be above half-an-inch in length ; 

 otherwise, they arrest and blunt the hatchet of the resinier when he 

 comes to make gashes where they are. The good of attending to this 

 is experienced in the pineries of Gascony. 



" At Belle-Isle M. Trochu prefers, on the contrary, pruning close to 

 the trunk, and leaving no spike, executed in the beginning of winter 

 as being the method most favourable to the production of planks 

 without knots and without holes, 



o 



