Cree's System of Pruning Forest Trees. 445 



we ought always to keep in mind, that a mismanaged crop of 

 wood is a very different thing from a mismanaged crop of corn. 

 The latter is only an annual crop ; and hence, however much a 

 farmer may feel for the failure of any of his crops through care- 

 lessness or mismanagement, the loss is only that of a single 

 season ; whereas a mismanaged crop of wood is, comparatively 

 speaking, the loss of the land itself, the crop requiring frequently 

 half a century, and sometimes more, to arrive at maturity. But 

 it is much easier to admit that the evil of mismanagement of our 

 woods does exist, than to explain the reasons of that carelessness 

 or indifference towards this species of property, on the part of 

 those to whom, under proper management, it would become such 

 a source of profit. 



The young and rising tree must be modified by art ; for, 

 though Nature performs her work unassisted and alone, she is 

 often found to produce irregularities in the growth to maturity 

 of a tree, which are not profitable, nor suited to the uses to 

 which it is employed by man : hence it is for man to modify 

 the tree, so as to suit the purposes required. 



Much discrepancy exists in the statements of different authors 

 on the subject of pruning. Pontey, Nicol, Sang, Monteath, and 

 others, as is well known, hold very different opinions on many 

 points connected with it. In such circumstances, those who 

 have the charge of woods, and who may be more guided by the 

 opinions of others than from rules deduced from their own 

 experience, may feel a difficulty in determining the proper 

 system which ought to be adopted. Besides, it is not to be 

 expected that foresters in general, and quiet country gentlemen, 

 should have in their possession the works of many authors on 

 this subject, to enable them to contrast and collate the different 

 modes recommended, and to weigh their merits, or ascertain 

 their correctness, by long-tried experiments. Hence it is that 

 some have implicitly followed one system, until they ultimately 

 found it to be a bad one; others, again, have followed a different 

 system, which they, too, have found to fall far short of their ex- 

 pectations in its beneficial effects ; and the result of these attempts, 

 commenced with a disposition to manage well, has often been 

 to neglect their woods altogether. But that this is a state in 

 which trees ought not to be left, is easy to be shown. Trees, 

 when left to themselves, often have a tendency to shoot out into 

 large forked branches, or two or more shoots contend with each 

 other for ascendancy as leaders ; and such trees, even at the 

 period of maturation, will frequently be found to present only a 

 quantity of brushwood. Now, it is the province of pruning, 

 under a proper system, to modify and correct these evils ; in 

 short, in order to produce a clean and large stem of timber, 

 pruning can rarely be dispensed with. 



