42 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



with (p. 454)- At page 43 he congratulates British proprietors 

 on having recently adopted a mode of thinning on what he 

 calls "a regular systematic principle, by which the crops are 

 kept at all stages of their growth in a regular state, one tree 

 from another, and from this at all times in an equally healthy 

 condition, and never allowed to become crowded before 

 thinning." Writing (p. 571) on the "nature and necessity of 

 thinning plantations," he again urges that in rearing up a 

 plantation " principally for the sake of the value of timber, 

 etc.," that " the object should be to keep the branches of each 

 individual tree from interfering with those of its surrounding 

 neighbours and no more." At p. 573, advising " now to proceed 

 systematically in regard to the thinning of plantations in all 

 woodlands," he writes, " on all the properties respecting woods 

 of which we have reported, we have invariably recommended, 

 as a means of improvement, that the several ages of plantations 

 should be divided into equal partions, and one such portion 

 should be periodically and systematically thinned once in 

 three, four, five or six years, according to the age respectively." 

 At p. 575, speaking of six hundred and thirty-nine acres of 

 trees of the .respective ages of from forty-five to sixty years, 

 he writes, " the trees should have attained their confirmed habit 

 and should grow comparatively little in the spread of their 

 limbs." Clearly he is here thinking of trees still retaining 

 their earliest branches upon them. 



Brown did not originate the system of planting 

 " nurses " in young plantations, but he elaborated it to 

 an extravagant extent, and probably few practices have 

 caused more loss to proprietors than that of planting 

 so many nurses, or indeed nurses at all. We have been 

 unable to find any clear explanation of the practice, but 

 it seems to be taken for granted that it means the filling up, of 

 the spaces between the trees composing a thinly-planted 

 permanent crop with a hardier species, in order to shelter the 

 permanent crop until it becomes established, the nurses being 

 gradually removed when no longer needed. The system is a 

 practical admission of the soundness of the principle on which 

 density of culture at all stages is based ; but owing to the way 

 in which the nursing system has been carried out it has 

 defeated its purpose, and, next to over-thinning, probably no 

 practice has caused so much loss as over-nursing. In German 

 forestry, a far greater number of trees are brought on to the 

 ground at planting than can be found room for for any great 

 length of time, the object being to establish over-head canopy 



