412 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



that appears to rival the main or leading stem. In close plantations, 

 consisting of grove and underwood intermixed, (supposing them to have 

 Leen executed at proper distances,) the only object should be to pre- 

 serve the spiral shape of the former, and the subordinate character of 

 the latter, by timely retrenchment. If that be not effected, nature is 

 prevented from generating such provisions as are indispensable to pre- 

 serve the vigour of both. In both of the above cases the system of 

 *' cutting in,'* or what I shall venture to call Terminal Pruning, will 

 be found most consistent with science, and with successful practice. 



In pruning woods for profit, the task is more complicated, and con- 

 sequently more difficult ; and the obtaining, as Pontey insists on, " the 

 greatest weight of wood " is a material object, provided it be wood of 

 ffood quality, which according to his system cannot always be produced. 

 But experience has shown how miserably the means of attaining this 

 object have been mistaken in Scotland, and still more in England, within 

 the last twenty years. To call the lopping and hacking method a 

 Scotch practice, (as some late writers have confidently done,) is nearly 

 as absurd as to call the " General method of Planting Waste Lands," as 

 practised in every part of Europe where the art of planting is known 

 and cultivated, the " Scotch method ; " and it shows an extraordinary 

 unacquaintance with the history of that art. Poor Scotland, indeed, 

 labours diligently to follow John Bull in all his follies, as well as his 

 improvements ; but it seems hard to make her responsible for practices 

 which, whether good or bad, she unquestionably has derived from her 

 neighbours of the south. It is a certain fact, that it is little more than 

 a century since the arts of planting and gardening were generally cul- 

 tivated in Scotland, and that they were, and are now, cultivated solely 

 after the English methods : and it is as certain that, previously to the 

 publication of Pontey 's treatise on pruning, which came out in 1806, 

 the barbarous method of lopping trees, with a view to their improvement, 

 was nearly unknown north of the Tweed. 



If planters could only be persuaded that, by means of lopping and 

 pruning, they will not accelerate the growth of trees, it would be a great 

 point gained ; and that, if woods he left to nature, they will advance 

 even more rapidly than where the lopping system is adopted. The 

 fact is, that no boughs should ever be removed larger than what the 

 growth of the bark will, in two, or perhaps three years, fairly cover ; 

 and even with such a precaution, the evil of knotty and unsound 

 wood (which invariably attends the lopping method) will not altogether 

 be remedied. If we inquire how nature, in woods of her own sowing, 

 raises the cleanest and soundest timber of every species, we shall find that 

 it is by displacing, early and gradually, the superfluous lateral branches. 



