150 THINNING. 



rays of the sun to dry and heat the soil. A cool 

 yshady place and equal temperature suits it best. 



The system of thinning young plantations the first 

 time, with the object of deriving profit from the thin- 

 ning, is very objectionable. Not that there is any- 

 thing wrong in disposing of the thinnings to the very 

 best advantage, but the profits spoken of as derived 

 from thinnings have done so much to mislead pro- 

 prietors, and induce them to injure, if not ruin, their 

 woodlands, that the system should be unsparingly de- 

 "^ounced. "We saw a plantation lately which had been 

 thinned for pit-props, and it was sad to see most of 

 the fine growing and best-proportioned trees cut down, 

 and the coarse and weakly ones left as the crop, — many 

 of the latter so weakly that they could scarcely sus- 

 tain their own weight. A report set forth this plan- 

 tation as an example of profit, and showed that it 

 yielded, as thinnings, in a given time, from £8 to £10 

 per acre. But the same report should also have stated 

 how much thinning had reduced the value of the per- 

 manent crop. On some estates a large revenue is 

 derived from what are termed thinnings, although the 

 plantations are so over-thinned already that they are 

 suffering severely from it. I know young Scots fir 

 plantations being thinned containing only 200 trees 

 per acre, and some also containing scarcely half that 

 number. Thinning is a very general and convenient 

 term, and is understood and practised by many 

 foresters very differently. Cutting down the tender 

 sapling as a weed of a few years' growth is termed 

 thinning, and the operation of feUing all but the last 

 tree of the matured old forest is known by the same 

 term. The two greatest errors amongst foresters are — 

 being too late in commencing to thin, and continuing 



