196 



PRUNING AND THINNING. 



PT. IV, 



Plant an oak in your kitchen garden, and clear it of 

 all neighbouring growth ; that is, shield the tree from 

 accident, let nature alone, let the tree have perfect 

 shelter, perfect soil, and perfect room. So far from 

 growing with a branchless stem, its lower boughs shall 

 on all sides, along the very ground, in length make a 

 good race with its leader. What, then, are the natural, 

 or rather accidental pruners ? What pruners make 

 the tall, clean stem valuable as timber ? They are 

 three in number — coppice-wood, cattle, or neighbour- 

 ing trees. These are nature's journey men-pruners, 

 and most abominable bunglers they are. They follow 

 their mistress's plan, and prune by killing the branches, 

 which, till they rot off, are inclosed in the stem, and 

 form disunited or movable knots. If accident may 

 prune, why may not art ? But if art and the saw are 

 not allowed to do this pruning, they should at least 

 assist, and cut off the boughs as they are killed by 

 neighbouring trees. I only talk here in reference to 

 the senseless clamour against pruning — of whether 

 pruning is good or bad for the tree, and for the timber ; 

 not of whether it would pay or not. That must depend 

 on a variety of circumstances — the price of labour, of 

 the faggots, of the timber, &c., &c. 



A branch, as long as it is alive, does not form a 

 knot in timber, but only a cross-grain, that is, as the 

 stem increases each year in girthing, it incloses each 

 year a portion of the root of each of its branches ; and 

 the grain of these branches forms, of course, an angle 



