180 MANAGEMENT OF WOODS. 



efficacy except when applied as a preventive, before 

 the symptoms of disease become visible. 



In perusing this and the preceding section, the 

 reader may be disposed to think that the manage- 

 ment of woods, on the plan here recommended, will 

 be productive of enormous expense. Upon trials 

 however, the mode of proceeding inculcated in these 

 pages will be found cheaper than the slovenly and 

 erroneous methods in common use. It is true, that, 

 by the latter, so much work is done at once that few 

 repetitions are required ; but this does not in the 

 smallest degree diminish the real quantity of la- 

 bour. Suppose, in pruning, according to the di- 

 rections of the foregoing section, that the opera^ 

 tion is repeated five or six times before the plan- 

 tation is twenty years old, it is evident that, at 

 each of these times, few branches will require to be 

 displaced, in comparison to the number that must 

 undergo the same fate all at once, if we do not be- 

 gin the process till the trees have reached the above 

 mentioned age. It is evident, also, that there will 

 be much more time required to cut every separate 

 branch in the latter case than in the former, as, by 

 pruning frequently, the shoots to be taken off must 

 necessarily be of a much smaller size than when the 

 process takes place more seldom. It is easier to cut 



