PLANK. 



13 



This system of pruning— encouraging numerous 

 feeders and one leader while the tree is young, and 

 of allowing or rather inducing the branches, after 

 the tree has acquired sufficient height, to spread out 

 into a horizontal top, is in harmony with, and only 

 humouring the natm-al disposition of trees, and is 

 therefore both seemly and of easy practice The 

 perfection of naval forest economy would consist in 

 superadding (according to instructions to be given 

 on training of timbers) a top of which every branch 

 is a valuable bend or knee, though in consequence 

 of the situation the timber will be fragile, and of 

 light porous texture. 



In pruning and educating for plank timber, 

 the whole art consists in training the tree as much 

 as possible, and with as little loss of branch as 

 possible, to one leader and numerous feeders, and 

 to the regular cone figure which the pine tribe na- 

 turally assumes. This can be best and most easily 

 performed by timely attention — checking every over- 

 luxuriant, overshadowing branch and wayward shoot 

 on its first appearance ; so that none of the feeders 

 which spring forth at first may be smothered, till 



* Commencing by times, the greater part of training and prun- 

 ing for plank, excepting in the case of dead branches, fractures, 

 and last pruning, may be performed by a small knife. 



