166 
ARBORICULTURE. 
ARBORICULTURE. 
Article X.—ON PRUNING FOREST TREES. 
BY A FORESTER. 
The taste for plantations may be good or bad, but tlie labour annu¬ 
ally required in thinning and pruning them, must necessarily furnish 
employment to the most valuable, though often the least considered 
of the children of the soil, those namely who are engaged in its cul¬ 
tivation. To obtain the immediate command of wood, mature 
enough to serve as shelter and ornament has hitherto been denied to 
the improver; he has been compelled to form his plan whilst his 
plants are pigmies, to await their slow progress towards maturity, and 
to bequeath as a legacy to his successors and descendants the plea¬ 
sure of witnessing the full accomplishment of his hopes and wishes. 
He also too often bequeaths his land to the care of careless and igno¬ 
rant persons, who from want of taste or skill leave his purposes un¬ 
fulfilled. 
Trees weakened by growing in a crowded state, become more liable 
to disease, the attacks of insects, and parasitic plants, as mosses and 
lichens, which rarely or never appear on healthy and vigorous trees. 
It is a great but a common error to suppose that by leaving trees in 
an individually crowded state, the object of a close cover is secured; 
on the contrary this object will only be gained for a few years at first, 
or until the trees interfere with each other’s healthy growth, and be¬ 
gin to contend for existence. By yearly judicious pruning and 
thinning, or by keeping every individual tree in its most perfect 
vigorous state, a perpetual cover will be obtained, as complete as the 
species of Tree and the nature of the soil will admit. 
Timely thinning and pruning, thereby admitting a circulation of 
pure air, and the solar rays into the interior of the plantations will 
check the propagation and growth of parasites. 
A Forester. 
Montgomery , March Is/, 1833. 
