FOREST TREES. 
369 
spaces round the circumference of the head. The size of the tree 
continues to increase; the proportion and symmetry of its make, are 
maintained at all times; and we see, when it has arrived at the height 
of eighty feet, with a stem probably five feet diameter, its stem and 
branches bear the same proportion to each other, that they did when 
the height was forty feet. Compare it now with what it was when 
but forty feet in height; at that height it had sprays to the number 
very likely of one thousand: look to the full grown tree, and imagine 
a space within its boughs equal to the size of the tree at forty feet 
height. Observe how many boughs the full grown tree has in this 
space, and you will immediately see what an immense number of 
sprays must have been shed. The large limbs extend, perhaps 
several feet from the stem without any subdivision. There are now 
no limbs branching out from the stem, within ten feet of the ground; 
but when the tree was but eight feet high, it had many tiers of bran¬ 
ches, extended and divided into many small sprays; and when the 
tree was still younger, the side branches spread out from the stem 
within a few inches of the ground. What is become of them ? 
Now, there is not a side branch within ten feet of the ground. The 
space formerly filled by the stem, branches, and the whole of the 
young tree at eight years of age, is now occupied by the huge, solid, 
and beautiful stem of an Oak; not a sign of the side branches, so 
numerous in the young tree, can be seen, they are all vanished, only 
the leading shoot remains, and that enlarged to such a size that it bears 
not the slightest resemblance to what it was in its youth. 
Some imagine that whenever a stem is free from branches, it is 
owing to pruning or to the browsing of cattle; but this is not the 
case, it is natural to a timber-tree, be its situation what it may, to 
have a certain portion of its stem clear of branches. 
There are no pruners in the uncultivated forests from whence we 
have the long pines and deals imported, with often thirty or forty 
feet of clear stem before the branches begin. These trees have grown 
without the assistance of the pruner; and they have shed boughs 
that were far above the reach of cattle. These forests clearly prove 
that trees have the power of shedding such sprays as are useless, or 
unnecessary, for a tree could not reach the height of thirty or forty 
feet without a great number of branches. It must have branches 
when but a foot or two high ; the number and size of these branches 
must increase as the tree increases in height, and a tree thirty feet in 
height, must have a great number of branches; yet we have the 
stems of trees thirty feet high without a single branch. How do the 
advocates for pruning reconcile this to their philosophy, will they 
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