410 EFFECT OF CLOSE PLANTING. 



gressively advancing to maturity ; the other retrograding, dying 

 year by year — the diminution of its concentric rings proving to 

 demonstration that it has not room to grow." 



Upon this subject the reader may consult a paper by Mr. G-osse, in the 

 Transactions of the Society of Arts, vol. xlviii. p. 214. 



In this case it is sufficiently evident, that in the right-hand 

 specimen the grov?th was at first, when the trees did not choke 

 each other, fully as rapid as in that on the left, when they 

 continued to be properly thinned ; but after the third year, the 

 formation of timber in the former case began to be arrested, 

 and was immediately after reduced to a minimum quantity; 

 while in the latter it continued to form, with little variation, 

 year by year. 



The same friendly hand also furnished a specimen of Spruee- 

 fir from an estate in his neighbourhood, in which reliance had 

 been placed upon crowding as a substitute for careful tending. 

 The rates of growth were as follows. 



In the first five years the tree grew 26-lOths of an inch in diameter. 



Here, in thirty-five years, the tree only acquired a diameter 

 of ten inches and a half, the annual formation of timber 

 beginning to diminish after the fifth year, more rapidly after 

 the fifteenth, as the trees became more and more crowded 

 together; and it was only after the thirtieth year, at which 

 time the increase in diameter had been reduced from more 

 than five-tenths to little more than one-tenth of an inch 

 annually, that the formation of timber began to be restored, 

 and this, which was apparently owing to some accidental 

 clearing, only in a slight and very unequal degree ; for, from 

 the section it appeared that, although on one side an inch of 

 increase in diameter took place in five years, yet over the 

 principal part of the circumference not more than two-tenths of 



