1885.] WOODLANDS IN SUSSEX AND KENT. 345 



" Iron Hill field, in parishes of Fernhurst and Woolbeding, 

 9 a. Or. 18 p., planted all with chestnut in 1835. Plants cut o£f in 

 1840. In 1849, at nine years' growth, sold by auction at £14, 10s. 

 per acre. In 1858, at nine years' growth, £18, 15s. per acre. In 

 1868, at ten years' growth, £35 per acre. In 1868, at eight 

 years' growth, £30, 15s. per acre." 



The expense of trenching forms another reason for keeping under- 

 woods clear of timber, because it pays to trench the land for 

 underwood, even at a cost of £8 per acre, to promote rapid growth ; 

 but it does not pay to trench for timber, since conclusive experi- 

 ments have shown that trees will exhibit no difference in size on 

 trenched and untrenched land after a period of thirty years, though 

 they certainly grow faster for a few years in tlie soil which has been 

 loosened. £8 per acre, and sixty, eighty, or one hundred years' 

 accumulated interest upon it, would destroy the profit of timber- 

 growing, as the planters well know. 



According to the figures already given, the cost of planting an 

 acre of underwood does not exceed £20, the land being trenched 

 and fenced, and managed in tire best style ; while the best chestnut 

 underwoods are frequently worth more than £80 per acre, at eight 

 or ten years' growth, the letting value of the laud for farming 

 purposes being from 20 s. to 25 s. an acre. The colder clay land, on 

 the other hand, yields a very different result. Ash coppice at nine 

 years' growth, on land worth 10s. to 15s. per acre, may yield, in 

 good times and favourable situations, £20 per acre, provided there 

 is no timber on the ground. But there is usually a wide difference 

 between average results and the best results, or those which are 

 occasionally obtained, be they unusually good or bad. Mr. Glutton, 

 the eminent land agent, computed the value of an acre of average 

 underwood in the counties I have mentioned at £l0 per acre after 

 ten years' growth, the land being worth to rent 10s. per acre, or a 

 shilling per pound of the value of the produce, and the underwood 

 being entirely free from timber. 



During the earlier period of growth in those cases where under- 

 wood and timber are grown together, the former yields an income, 

 while land in timber alone yields notlnng. Mr. Glutton has com- 

 pared the two systems in regard to their ultimate results, taking a 

 period of one htmdred years for the purpose of his calculation. He 

 estimates the return from an acre of underwood, without trees, at 

 10 s. per acre per annimi, as we have seen. If oak trees are planted 

 with the same underwood, he considers that they will not affect its 

 value during the first twenty years. They will affect the value 

 injuriously during the next forty years, but the thinnings of good 

 growing oak wiU, he believes, make up the loss. 



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