172 



PARKS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS. 



branches being carefully removed as tliey appear. Oti 

 the lawns of the pleasure-ground, some firs are dis- 

 posed to extend their lower branches too far. To coun- 

 teract this tendency, and to throw the strength of the 

 tree into the main stem, the terminal bud or shoot of 

 the lower branches is to be pinched off. Cedars, and 

 other spreading firs, treated in this way, may be made 

 to assume an upright form. 



Thinning. — Thinning is an operation nearly as neces- 

 sary as pruning, and in fir plantations perhaps the 

 more necessary of the two. As young woods are gen- 

 erally planted more densely than is needful for their 

 permanent condition, in order that the young trees 

 may produce a shelter for each other, and a correspond- 

 ing warmth in the climate, the period selected for thin- 

 ning the young plantations should vary with the pro- 

 gress of the trees, as that again will vary with the soil 

 and climate in which they grow. Some plantations 

 may receive a partial thinning by the time they have 

 been seven or eight years planted; others, in more 

 exposed places, may not require the same sort of thin- 

 ning till they are double that age. 



In the process of thinning, it should be distinctly 

 kept in mind that the trees which are removed were 

 originally planted to shelter and draw up the trees 

 which are to remain, and that only those are to be 

 cleared away, from time to time, which are doing in- 

 jury to those designed to be permanent. When this 

 principle is made to regulate the work, there is little 

 danger that thinning will be carried to an injurious 

 excess. Nothing is more prejudicial, than excessive 

 thinning. The bark of those trees which have been 

 well sheltered by close planting is less . dense, and 



