348 WOODLANDS IN SUSSEX AND KENT. [March 



think, vinprecedented — -price of £72 per acre. The larch on that 

 estate (poles and timber) has yielded a clear profit of between £5 

 and £Q per acre. The extensive telegraphic communication along 

 the roads and railways of Kent and Sussex have furnished a large 

 demand for telegraph poles, which are usually of larch twenty or 

 thirty years old. The superiority of larch poles over all others for 

 the purpose just named, or for hops, or any other purpose where 

 strength and durability are required, together with small size, has 

 led planters to commit the not unfrequent mistake of planting larch 

 on land only fit for growing Scotch fir or spruce. Mr. Duft' planted 

 some sandy clay at Bayham, in Crowborough and the Ashdown Forest 

 district, not far from the forest, and said that it was worth 18 s. a 

 few years ago for agricultural purposes, that he planted it with 

 chestnut 4 feet apart each way, and fiUed up with larch to 2 feet, 

 the cost being £15 an acre; and this plantation and underwood 

 yielded a revenue of £5, 12s. per acre per annum. The larch of 

 course was all removed for poles, and the chestnu.t became a 

 permanent copse. Probably the chestnut flourished in conse- 

 quence of the mixture of clay. Sands must be tolerably good 

 to grow chestnut profitably, and planters at Crowborough, or 

 in the forest district, are well aware that some of the land 

 may do for chestnut, more of it for birch, some for larch, and 

 more for Scotch fir. Cobbett passed near Crowborough during his 

 " Eural Eides," and anathematized the poverty of the soil. Between 

 Forest Eow and Uckfield, he says, " is a heath with here and there 

 a few birch scrubs upon it, verily the most villanously ugly spot I 

 ever saw in England," the soil "a nasty spewy gravel." This was 

 in 1822. And the wild common he thus describes would certainly 

 not carry larch, though it grows very good Scotch fir when cattle 

 are excluded ; and larch grows freely on the lower, less exposed, and 

 more productive slopes of Crowborough Warren, where, within a 

 mile of Cobbett's bare hill, Mr. Eamsbotham has planted Scotch fir 

 and larch with judgment and success. When Mr. Duff recommends 

 chestnut and larch for Ashdown Forest, and for these large tracts of 

 sandy soil worth 10 s. or 15 s. as arable a few years ago, to be planted 

 on the plan just noticed, he is quite correct ; but the land must be 

 the best of the Ashdown Forest district, and it ought to be worth 

 15s. or 20s. to farm now, if it is to yield £40 or £50 worth of 

 poles per acre at ten years' growth. 



