Editor s Box. 1 1 3 



timber ; but according to Mr. McLaren we can grow a more valuable tree in 

 about fifty years, in this country, with more than a load and a half of timber 

 in it. Will he kindly give us further information about it, especially as 

 to the purposes for which it is chiefly employed ? 



In the useful Table of Values which you have given us at page 31 of your 

 Journal, I observe that poplar, in the ordinary way and in the midland 

 counties, fetches about the same price as beech, rather less perhaps, but 

 it jumps up all at once in the solitary instance of Linlithgow to 2s. per 

 foot, and drops in the case of Denbighshire to lOd., as also in Norfolk and 

 Suffolk. Probably this wide difference has something to do with the size 

 of the wood as well as the quality. 



Among other kinds on my own little property is a single row of these 

 poplars, planted fifteen years ago as a screen. They are now forty feet high, 

 and seven to nine inches in diameter at a height of ten feet from the ground. 

 They are about three feet apart, and instead of 70, at least 700 of them 

 might easily be raised on an English acre, with plenty of room for ventila- 

 tion, and even for traffic between them, to be thinned, if needful, in 

 thirty years' time. There are other varieties of the tribe around, 

 such as the balsam poplar, now in bright green leaf, a branching, large- 

 leaved, and not very tall -growing tree, and the more elegant aspen, with 

 scarcely yet a bud showing at this unusually late date, the 9 th of May. 



If poplar wood is of value, I imagine plenty of it may be got cheaply in 

 France. All the way from Quilleboeuf to Rouen, the banks of the Seine 

 are chiefly fringed with poplar, till the eye wearies of them. As seen from 

 the river they often intercept the view of the open country beyond, and 

 from their great height they make the oak woods in the background look 

 poor and stunted till you get in among them. 



I am not aware that poplar has either resinous, pitchy, or turpentine 

 properties in its sap, but the sprigs or chippings, even when scarcely dry, 

 are very combustible, and make good kindling. 



I shall be glad to hear more of the virtues of the poplar tree, and in 

 what " constructive work" its wood is " much used " in this country ; and as 

 science is never more happy than when employed in imparting instruction 

 to the unlearned but willing student, I am sure your contributors will not 

 only pardon my intrusion among them, but also kindly enlighten the 

 perhaps not inexcusable ignorance of 



An Amateue, 



Nmr Old Oak Farm, Middlesex, 

 %th May, 1877. 



BATTING MATERIALS. 



Sir, — In the Journal of Forestry for May, reference is made to the 

 deleterious effects of batting iron standards with sulphur. I believe it 

 will be somewhat difficult to say whether the effects referred to are caused 

 by electric or chemical action or both. At the same time it is a well- 

 known fact that brimstone is a highly electric agent, and may possibly 



