REPOET ON LARCH FORESTS. 423 



age is apt to overcome and injure smaller plants. In England 

 larger plants are frequently employed ; but in Scotland the re- 

 moval of a larch at a size beyond two or three feet commonly 

 checks its progress, so that a smaller and younger plant would 

 more than overtake it. Besides, there is an idea among the most 

 experienced planters, that removing the larch of a large size has 

 a tendency to increase the disease in the tree known by the name 

 of pumping or heart-rot ; and from several examples that have 

 come under my notice, I think the opinion is well founded, par- 

 ticularly with respect to land that has been manured and under 

 tillage. According to the laws of vegetable physiology, the spon- 

 giolcs, or terminal parts of the roots of a plant, have the power of 

 selecting proper food, and in rejecting injurious substances, at 

 least in ordinary circumstances, to a very great extent, so long- 

 as they are in a healthy and perfect state. But when the roots 

 are cut or mutilated, they are rendered capable of absorbing any 

 fluid substance with which the mutilated part comes in contact ; 

 hence large plants, whose roots are generally pruned, or to some 

 extent curtailed by removal, are apt to imbibe substances which 

 engender myceleum, for which the tree has a tendency. There 

 are more larch plants used for forest plantations in Scotland, at 

 the age of two and three years, than at any other. Those of two 

 years are commonly one yearseedling, one year transplanted. 

 Few planters in Scotland have, during the present century, 

 planted more, or understood the subject better, than the late Sir 

 William G. Gr. Gumming, of Altyre, Bart. He informed me 

 that when he came into possession of his estates, the best larches 

 on the property were ascertained to have been planted out when 

 they were only one-year old seedling plants. Soon afterwards, 

 in forming a plantation, I planted from twenty to thirty acres of 

 bare heath, on a hazelly gravel soil, with one-year seedlings ; and 

 although after doing so the plants were hardly visible on the 

 surface, yet in a few months they emerged above the heath ; and 

 in autumn, when their leaves began to fade, the plants displayed 

 their well-ripened foliage, and were seen in their proper places, 

 and in a few years could not be distinguished from those that 

 were twice their age at the time of planting ; and there is this 

 advantage in inserting the plants when young, that they arise in 

 a hroad stocky figure, with a justness of proportion which is the 

 life of a larch. 



On thinning larch plantations. — This is an operation which 

 is very much neglected throughout Scotland. I believe there is 

 no yearly loss attending the cultivation of any other crop in this 

 country which bears any comparison to it. It would be a much 

 more judicious mode of procedure to insert only half the usual 

 number of plants per acre, than to neglect the timely thinning. 

 But since early thinnings are everywhere valuable for such 



