90 ON THINNING PLANTATIONS, 
those of greater vigour and promise, as it requires a great 
extent of foliage to mature healthy and sound timber. There 
is no given space which trees of any particular age should 
occupy. The skilful forester regulates the thinning so that 
the trees may possess the figure for the purposes intended, 
and the prosperity and profit of plantations depend greatly on 
his skill and management. 
In hardwood plantations, the oak, the ash, and the Scotch 
elm are among the most valuable of our timber trees. The 
oak is in general of slower growth than the others from the 
plant, and requires rather more space to allow it to grow to 
maturity in its best form; but the difference is compensated 
by the value of its bark; and although it requires shelter 
when young, it luxuriates in soils less fertile than that 
required by most other sorts. In good soils, the oak, the ash, 
the elm, and the sycamore may be grown profitably, either by 
themselves or mixed. In thinning a young plantation of 
hardwood, it is frequently found that a Scotch pine, or any 
other tree inserted for shelter, presses too closely on a more 
valuable plant, and yet that the shelter cannot be altogether 
dispensed with ; in such cases the branches of the pine which 
press too closely on the more valuable plant should be 
removed in the first instance, and the tree itself at a subse- 
quent thinning. The distances at which hardwood trees 
should stand apart in a plantation, at any particular age, 
depend on their luxuriance, and on the exposed nature of the 
ground ; in narrow beltings they admit of being much closer 
than in the depth of the forest. 
Considerable loss is frequently sustained by producing 
through confinement tall trunks without a proportionate 
diameter ; and unless the soil is very congenial, and the trees 
of great vigour, they are often slow to become stout or shapely 
when ample space has at last been afforded to them. In 
plantations formed with plants at a distance of four feet, the 
thinning should commence when the plants attain to the 
height of from twelve to fifteen feet, by removing the more 
worthless kinds, which press too closely.on the others, and 
