ON THINNING PLANTATIONS. 89 
sidered the soil unsuitable for them. Another proprietor 
who purchased an estate twenty years ago, which contained a 
considerable extent of young larch plantation, then about 
thirty years of age, where all the best trees had been thinned 
out previously to the sale of the property, had difficulty in 
accounting for the contrast at present between the dwarf 
stunted old trees and the vigour of those of his own planting 
in soil apparently similar. The effects of early mismanage- 
ment are manifested as legibly in the vegetable as in the 
animal creation, more especially in the Conifere, which have 
not the power of re-establishing their lateral branches to 
redeem their proportional girth. 
It is necessary to plant pines and larches close in exposed 
situations, and also in some cases to suppress a surface vegeta- 
tion; early thinning, therefore, is sometimes necessary to 
afford a sufficient space for the trees before the thinnings have 
reached a size in ordinary demand; but the thinnings that 
are of no use in one locality are frequently valuable in another. 
Early thinnings are generally useful for small rustic fences, 
and the trees with branches (brushwood) are suitable for 
fences and shelter to young hedges, sea-side plantations, for 
embankments, to prevent the encroachment of rivers and 
rapid streams. In the Highlands this description of brush- 
wood is employed by the agriculturists in forming sheds for 
storing turnips during winter. 
It is when the trees are apt to get too tall and feeble in 
proportion to their girth that thinning must begin, and 
plantations arrive at this point at ages which vary very much, 
owing to the soil, the situation, the closeness of the planting, 
and the species. No tree is more easily injured by confine- 
ment than the larch. In some districts, however, this tree is 
planted closely, and grown in masses, for the purpose of hop- 
poles and prop-wood ; in such cases, however, the ground is 
cleared of the whole crop while the plantation is yet young, 
seldom exceeding twenty-five years of age. 
In plantations intended to yield heavy timber, the smallest 
trees should be first weeded out, giving sufficient room to 
