234 CULTURE AND MANAGEMENT OF OAK. 



can thus have access would rather check the growth 

 of the plants than do them good. If this rule is ob- 

 served, all the Scots firs and larches that will require 

 to be taken out before they are sixteen years old, 

 will not render the plantation thinner than a thriv- 

 ing one of the same kind of trees would, for its own 

 sake, need to be at twenty years after planting. 



When the oaks are five years old, it will be time 

 to give them their first pruning. As the way in 

 which that process should be executed is fully de- 

 tailed under the article bearing the same name, it is 

 unnecessary to enlarge upon it here, farther than to 

 observe that the operation ought to be repeated once 

 every two years, till the oaks be between twenty and 

 thirty years old. 



Thus have I endeavoured to describe as briefly, 

 but, at the same time, as perspicuously as possible, 

 my method of raising the oak. Of its efficacy, the 

 experiments I have made (an account of which shall 

 be, in the next section, laid before the reader), have 

 left no doubt on my mind. I am firmly established 

 in the conviction, that whoever puts the above di- 

 rections in practice upon any soil that will bear a 

 good crop of Scots firs or of larches, will find the 

 oak not more difficult to rear, and very little slower 

 in growth, than either of those hardy kinds of trees. 



