PRUNING AND THINNING. 
[Part IV. 
21G 
Do not think it a matter of no import whether 
the dead and the dying are cut or left standing. 
The absence of the dead and the dying is of the 
greatest importance to the living. The space 
occupied by dead heads, should be occupied by 
living limbs; and attenuated , dying, waving 
plants, from their locomotive power in wind, 
whip and denude their neighbours more than 
stouter plants can. 
Exposure is no excuse for not thinning plan¬ 
tations. There is no reason, because the heads 
of trees are exposed to wind, that their roots 
should be exposed to robbery from their neigh¬ 
bours and starved by their own want of head, 
resulting from the whipping of their neighbours. 
The best plants, being the tallest, have always 
borne the exposure. You do not expose them 
by cutting out the worst plants from below 
them; but you relieve them from what denudes 
their sides and robs their roots. If this opera¬ 
tion is trusted to a workman, he takes the best 
plants to sell , and leaves the weak ones to grow. 
These weak ones have always been overshadowed 
and so made tender , and when the large ones are 
withdrawn from above them, if they do not die, 
they do not grow, but remain hideous scare¬ 
crows ; then thinning gets a bad name, — <c the 
