344 WOODLANDS IN SUSSEX AND KENT. [March 



which is cut under less favourable circumstances at nine or ten 

 years old. In some cases the underwood only yields 5 s. per acre 

 per annum, and this, of course, pulls down the average. Prime 

 planted chestnut underwood, on the other hand, yields £36 per acre. 

 Mr. Tallant's experience confirms the opinion that timber and prime 

 underwood should not be grown together. The finest and most 

 profitable underwoods in Sussex and Kent are, in fact, entirely free 

 of timber. It might be a novelty to some persons to see 40 or 50 

 acres of chestnut coppice without a stick of timber in it, and yet that 

 is by far the most profitable method of growing rmderwood on good 

 land. Good mixed underwood is worth, at ten years old, for hop 

 poles, hoops, and many other articles, from £20 to X50 an acre, 

 and the late respected agent for the Earl of Darnley, of Cobhani 

 Hall, who owns a hop district stretching from Gravesend, on the 

 Thames, to Chatham, on the Medway, has sold the best chestnut 

 poles by auction, at eleven years' growth, to be cut by the buyer, at 

 £63 an acre. At the next sale the same piece sold at £44 an 

 acre, the price of hops having fallen, so that hop-growers were not 

 expending much in renewing the poles, and were not planting fresh 

 land. Hop poles generally are used shorter than they were, on the 

 principle of " under-poling," and coppice can be cut now at nine 

 years old instead of eleven. The yearly depreciation of poles has 

 been reduced by the use of creosote from £6 to £4 an acre ; but 

 even at the reduced cost, the annual expense of renewing hop poles 

 in Kent and Sirssex reaches more than £200,000 a year. The first 

 cost of poling an acre of tall-growing hops is £50, and if we take 

 the average cost at £40 per acre, the original cost of poling the 

 hops of Kent and Sussex then stands at £2,000,000. 



But at Midhurst, far from the hop district, the best chestnut 

 underwood, which is worth £36 per acre, is made entirely into 

 hoops for the London market. Lord Egmont's Down underwood is 

 of ash and hazel, of which the former is made into hoops and hop 

 poles, the latter into hurdles and sheep cages, the value per acre 

 being from £6 to £16 at twelve or tliirteen years old, the growth 

 on the chalk being slow. The distance from villages and cost of 

 labour checks planting on the wide downs. 



Ash makes a good pole at nine years old — that is, nine years 

 after planting — -when it wUl probably sell by auction at £12 per 

 acre. It thickens rapidly after the first cutting, and if rabbits, 

 which are particularly fond of ash, are kept down, the subsequent 

 cuttings will be worth probably £18 at the end of the second period 

 of nine years, and perhaps £28 afterwards. Mr. Tallant extracts 

 from the Cowdray estate books the following result of planting nine 

 acres of land, not worth more than 10 s. per acre for farm culture : — 



