218 
PRUNING FOREST TREES. 
Article XIV.—ON PRUNING FOREST TREES.— By Mr. Howden. 
Your correspondent, "George,” in volume 2, page 117, has given a 
lucid description of his system of pruning forest trees. See. I hope 
he writes as I do, for the good of the public, and am sorry to see he 
and I differ so widely both in theory and practice. Mr. George likes 
to see a large Fir tree, with branches down to the ground, while I 
think one with forty feet of fine clear stem, with a ten or fifteen feet 
top preferable. Mr. George likes to see a mighty large lime tree, 
shading half a rood of land, while I, like the Duke of Athol, prefer 
forty trees containing 100 cubic feet of timber each, on the same 
space of land. All this may be only fancy, either of us may be 
wrong, he may find a customer for his lime tree, or Weeping Ash, 
as readily as I can find one for my solid timber, but pro bona pub¬ 
lico, my taste is much superior to his. Fine clean timber is really 
a national benefit, as well as a profit to the possessor, foreshortened 
branches, or clipped spruces, may be all very well for ladies or gen¬ 
tlemen, who have time and caslrto spare, but when such timber comes 
to market, or the saw pit, their value is as the top of my trees, com¬ 
pared to the butt ends. Mr. George says, very truly, that to cut oil' 
a branch or rival leader close to the stem, when three or four inches 
in diameter makes such a large wound, that it endangers the life of 
the tree; Pray Mr. George, how came you to allow a branch or 
rival leader, to attain a diameter of three or four inches ? had you 
cut it off sixteen years ago, you would have done it with a six¬ 
teenth part of the trouble. Still a wound three or four inches in di¬ 
ameter is not such a deadly wound, but it may be healed, or that book 
of the Royal Gardener, Forsyth, is a grand hoax, but it is not a 
hoax, and I would advise George to read it. Granting that the 
young wood will never unite with the end of the stump, yet if the 
tree be allowed to stand for fifty or sixty }^ears after the amputation, 
it will lay fine clean planks on the outside of it. I do not altogether 
condemn the foreshortening, I frequently practice it myself on a long 
straggling branch, but I condemn the idea that a foreshortened bough 
will dwindle, shrink, or shrivel, and be thrown out of the stem like 
an old snake’s skin; really. Sir, a foreshortened branch, as long as it 
lives, will continue to increase in circumference, either more or less, 
so that amputation delayed is always the more dangerous. We find 
in gardening that it is often prudent to rub off the buds, before they 
attain the form of twigs, the same would improve timber trees. Buds, 
twigs, and leaves, are not the causes of healthy growing trees, but 
the effects of a good soil and situation. The branches, twigs, and 
