6 
limbs the thickness of the annual growth of the tree, and the 
knots are black and frequently loose from near the point where 
the limbs die. 
This very important fact should be kept in mind, viz., that 
thick young forests will grow more cords of wood, whether 
the wood be in lumber or in fuel trees, by being properly 
thinned than they will by letting them go unthinned. The 
more you cut out in thinning, up to a certain point, the larger 
and more profitable will be your timber crop and the sooner 
fit to cut. The same is true of a wood crop. 
This has been demonstrated by repeated experiments. All 
farmers know that they may have their corn, potatoes, grain, 
or grass so thickly seeded that the crop will be small. It is 
the same with the timber crop. Either too many or too few 
stalks of corn or number of trees to the acre diminishes the 
quantity of the crop. But there is this very important differ- 
ence to be observed in the growing of a crop of corn and a crop 
of timber. In growing corn and other farm crops we start the 
crops with about the number of plants we expect to mature, 
while to grow a crop of good timber we should start with a 
great many more trees to the acre than we intend to grow to 
timber size. 
This picture (see Fig. 1) shows the form of the pine, spruce 
or hemlock when grown in open land. 
The second picture (see Fig. 2) is of pines, which have 
grown from seed sown on poor plains, and they stand so 
close together that they are growing very slowly. They need 
to be thinned, and those selected to be grown into large trees 
should have their dry limbs removed. These trees have not 
green limbs enough instead of a surplus to be removed. The 
man who sowed the seed from which these pines, represented 
in the second picture, grew, died in 1883, and it is believed 
that he sowed their seed about 1870, and yet these pines, 
with the exception of those on the outside, average, far less 
than the size of common fence stakes. 
The pines shown in the third picture (see Fig. 3) are be- 
lieved to be younger than those shown in the second picture ; 
but their far larger size and greater thriftiness are readily 
