30 The East Anglian Timber Willow. 
Only a slight amount of rubbing may be required the second 
and third year, but this will depend upon various circumstances. 
It may be done with the hand, the strongest hedging gloves 
being worn, and sometimes supplemented by a bit-burnisher if 
there are a great many trees to be done. 
After the sets have been planted for three or four years, 
further pruning will be required if the stem is to be kept clean 
for the twenty-five feet which is considered to be the length 
of lower stem fit for use as bat wood. This can be partly done 
by means of a common razor fixed at an angle of 45° to a 
light pole, which is pressed upwards under the shoot and as close 
to the stem as possible. This is sufficient for shoots up to the 
size of a cedar pencil, but afterwards a saw must be used, 
attached to a pole or otherwise ; but it must be remembered 
that a saw leaves a rough surface, which is more difficult to 
heal over than a clean razor cut. 
It is finally necessary to use a ladder for the upper branches, 
and this is not very easy against a slender tree in moist ground. 
It is desirable, therefore, to have ladders made from 6 ft. to 
18 ft. long, of which the spokes may be nailed and not morticed, 
and to obtain lightness for carriage by hand the spokes may be 
placed somewhat further apart than is usual. The essential thing 
is that they should be some 24 in. to 30 in. wide at the bottom to 
ensure stability in soft ground, greater confidence to the pruner, 
and the performance of a greater amount of work. The top 
of the ladder should be flat to allow good holding to the feet, 
and the centre portion should be rounded out about six inches 
to fit the smaller stem of the tree and prevent the ladder 
slipping aside. This should be bound round with coarse 
canvas or other material to prevent injury to the bark. 
In many plantations the rubbing of the side shoots is 
carried out to the fullest extent, leaving a very small proportion 
of branches at the extreme tip of the set ; but experience does 
not enable me to speak with certainty as to the wisdom of 
this. On this subject the forester differs from the bat maker ; 
the latter, considering the lower twenty feet of the trunk 
from which he makes the best bats as all important, advocates 
the utmost shoot rubbing ; but the forester, who looks upon 
the set as the future tree and adopts the rules that are common 
to all trees, declares that there must be a much larger 
proportion of top than the bat maker advocates. He asserts 
that as the raw sap is drawn up into the tree it promotes 
leaves which in their turn “ elaborate ” it. The sap then 
returns downwards in the autumn to the cambium cells, 
depositing the alburnum to form the annual ring, and he says 
that if the leaves are insufficient, the deposit of alburnum or 
sap wood must be less, and the growth of the tree diminished 
