406 AMPUTATING. 



originai wound. We must, however, remember that the large 

 wounds produced by the amputation of the limbs of a tree can 

 never be healed, although they may be concealed ; so that if 

 the sear left by the process is a foot in diameter, an interruption 

 of the tissue to that extent must always remain, to the 

 destruction of the strength of the timber. By amputation a 

 blemish is necessarily introduced always proportionable to. 

 the size of the wound inflicted, that is to say, to the size of the 

 branch removed. In some cases the old wood becomes par- 

 tially rotten before the new wood closes over the wound; but 

 this more frequently happens when the cut slopes a little out- 

 wards from the trunk, and is not quite perpendicular. In the 

 former case, the new wood and bark, which for a time form a sort 

 of collar round the wound, allow the wet to lodge, which thus 

 facilitates decay. But where the wound has been vertical and the 

 cut clean, little or no decay takes place, as is proved by a speci- 

 men of Beech which the author has seen, from which a very large 

 limb had been removed, and in which the blemish was of course 

 proportionably great, though the old wood was perfectly sound. 



The reason why sloping amputations are followed by rotten- 

 ness, while perpendicular amputations remain sound, is that 

 rottenness commonly takes place in presence of water, which a 

 sloping wound allows to accumulate, while a perpendicular 

 wound allows no water whatever to lodge. Amputated wood, 

 which is shaved to a smooth surface, will not rot when perpen- 

 dicular. That is certain. One of the many proofs of this 

 important fact will be seen by referring to the curious example 

 of imbedded letters represented at p. 39, and also by Figures 

 LXXXIX. and XC, which show the consequence of oblique 

 and perpendicular amputation! 



Allusion has already (p. 400) been made to leaving young 

 trees very near each other, with a view to imitate nature and to 

 dispense with the necessity for any pruning whatever. Some 

 one says that " thick planting and annual pruning come the 

 nearest possible to the unassisted operation of natural causes," 

 and that all pruning may be resolvied into a question of 

 thinning. And this, we believe, is practically followed in some 

 celebrated German forests. There is no doubt that the natural 



