266 REPORT ON THE GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF PLANTATIONS. 



are not taken into account, being allowed to meet the general 

 expenses. 



Any piece of ground taken off for planting has, from the time 

 it is enclosed, a rent valuation continually accumulating against 

 it with interest. In many plantations there is good pasturage 

 for sheep or small cattle during the summer months, hence it is 

 often advisable to lay such plantations open for grazing, if not 

 otherwise kept as game preserves, and which, if kept for the 

 latter purpose, a rent against the game ought to be charged to 

 the amount the ground is worth for pasturage, by this means 

 getting quit of what would otherwise very much swell up the 

 chargeable amount unnecessarily. This is precisely the case in 

 the plantation described, wherein sheep, for several years past, 

 could have done no possible injury to the trees. 



The writer has never seen sheep produce any injurious effects 

 upon pine or fir plantations over fifteen years planted, by graz- 

 ing amongst them in the summer time, nor even during winter, 

 except in snow and frost, when pinched with hunger. Under 

 the latter circumstances, when the tops of the trees and green 

 branches are within reach of the sheep, they do bruise them, 

 though they scarcely ever eat them. Sheep accustomed to graze 

 in the pine forests of Strathspey scarcely at all injure the plants, 

 while sheep unaccustomed to them do at first partially injure 

 them. 



Goats also, though fond of the moss and lichen which grows 

 upon the bark of the trees, do not appear to injure the plants. 

 On examination of the trees, where hundreds of goats are graz- 

 ing, there is no appearance in any instance of the bark being 

 broken or of the top shoots being bruised or eaten. In the 

 writer's experience, where the soil is rich and the grasses rank 

 and luxuriant, it is beneficial to plantations to pasture them 

 during summer as soon as the branches of hardwoods are above 

 the animals' reach, and the leading shoots of pine and firs out of 

 the way of injury ; but on poor dry ground, with little herbage, 

 grazing seems of little or no advantage to the growing trees, but 

 in some cases the reverse. The apparent advantages which trees 

 seem to derive from having the luxuriant grasses kept down by 

 sheep or otherwise during the summer months are, modification 

 or prevention of ulcer in larch, and diminution of insects which 

 infest the trunks and branches of trees, as the Coccus larieis. 



No. 4 is a larch plantation in the county of Sussex, in the 

 south of England, thirty years planted. The trees were irregu- 

 larly dispersed over the ground, having been so left after clear- 

 ing a crop of hop-poles at time of cutting. The best of the larch 

 trees were marked with a streak of red paint previous to the lot 

 being sold. The trees thus marked were termed tellers, and now 

 constitute the subjects of the present statement. The trees, 



