278 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



have stood nearly fifty years, than which tliere can be no 

 better proof of its durability." For posts, it will probably 

 equal in durability our red cedar, while in the power to hold 

 nails it is greatly its superior. 



The European must not be confounded with the American 

 larch, which, although a valuable tree for many purposes, does 

 not make durable fence-posts. Timber of the European larch 

 is admirably adapted for rafters, joists, and the main timbers 

 in large buildings. When sawn into boards, however, it has 

 the serious drawback of excessive shrinkage, and a tendency 

 to warp in seasoning, and is therefore rarely used in this 

 form. Its principal uses in this country would be for railroad 

 sleepers, fence-posts, telegraph posts, hop and bean poles 

 and other rustic work, and for piles in bridges, wharves, and. 

 similar structures, where the rising and falling of the tide 

 requires the employment of the most durable timber possible. 

 White oak is generally thus employed, but it is probably less 

 durable than larch, and far too expensive. The fertilizing 

 eflects of a plantation of larch on poor, almost barren ground, 

 is remarkable, and now universally acknowledged. 



According to a writer in the Highland Society's Transac- 

 tions, quoted by Loudon, the pasturage under a plantation of 

 larches thirty years old, and which had been thinned to four 

 hundred trees to the acre, produced in Scotland an annual 

 rental of eight or ten shillings the acre, while the same land, 

 previous to the introduction of the larch, was let for one shil- 

 lino; the acre. Grigor * calls attention to the same good result 

 of planting the larch. "No tree," he says, " is so valuable as 

 the larch in its fertilizing effects, arising from the richness of 

 the foliage which it sheds annually. In a healthy wood the 

 yearly deposit is very great ; the leaves remain, and are con- 

 sumed on the spot where they drop, and when the influence 

 of the air is admitted, the space becomes clothed in a vivid 

 green, with many of the finest kinds of natural grasses, the 

 pasture of which is highly reputed in dairy management. 

 And in cases where woodland has been brought under grain- 

 crops, the roots have been found less difficult to remove than 

 those of other trees, and the soil has been rendered more 

 fertile than that which follows any other description of timber. 



* Arboriculture. John Grigor. Edinburgh, 1868. 



