414 EEPOET ON LAKCH FOEESTS. 



maritime exposures suffer from cold cutting winds, while the 

 foliage is young and tender ; exhausted soils cause a general 

 drying up of the tree, and ultimate death; stiff clays produce 

 sluggish growth, and superabundance of fruit ; soils dry on top 

 and wet below, produce pumping or ground-rot. Such are some 

 of the connections between soils and diseases. 



Fourth, The essentials of soils calculated to produce health, 

 rapid and vigorous growth, and sustain trees till seventy or 

 eighty years old, are briefly these : — Soil dry, free, and open, to a 

 depth of 3 feet ; virgin, or soil rather poor (not exhausted by 

 cropping). 



Fifth, Situation elevated, or freely exposed to evaporation, 

 but protected from cutting winds while in foliage. 



Sixth, The absorption, by the roots, to be maintained accord- 

 ing to evaporation by the branches ; this is attained by thinning, 

 so as to preserve the proper number of branches clear. 



Seventh, The crop of larch when 6 feet high (for timber) 

 should not exceed 1200 per acre. If destruction by game, &c, 

 has necessitated closer planting, an early thinning, say at three 

 or four years, should be adopted, and the crop reduced to the 

 above number. 



Eighth, Thinning should not be continued after about thirty 

 years old, and the crop, according to description, cut down at 

 fifty, sixty, seventy, or eighty years. 



Ninth, The crop to stand as timber at thirty years of age, should 

 not exceed 300 trees per acre upon good deep soil, and between 

 250 and 200 upon poor thin soil. It is not essential, in order to- 

 secure a proper crop, that the trees be either perfectly regular as 

 to distance, or of equal size, but in thinning this should be aimed 

 at as desirable. 



Tenth, The layers or zones of wood should be about ith of an 

 inch thick till forty years old, £th till fifty, ^th till sixty, and T \th 

 till seventy or eighty years. 



Eleventh, The form of a larch tree, grown for large timber till 

 nearly forty years old, should be conical, and its girth in inches 

 a little above ground should correspond to its feet in height. 

 Say at forty years old it girths 50 inches, at same time it should 

 stand 50 feet in height; at sixty years old, its girth at 10 feet 

 from the ground in inches should be equal to its height in feet ; 

 and at 20 feet from the ground, when seventy years old, its 

 girth in inches should correspond with its height in feet. 



Twelfth, After thirty to forty years old, larch plantations, where 

 the soil is dry, may be depastured with sheep during summer ; 

 and even in winter they do no damage, except in severe storms 

 they bark the exposed roots, hence must be excluded when the 

 latter circumstance occurs. 



Thirteenth, According as the lower branches loose their vitality 



