68 Sir John Stirling Maxwell [March IG, 



being introduced where the ground was suitable, with common spruce 

 in the wetter places, and here and there groups of various American 

 and Japanese conifers. The result was a conspicuous failure. Then 

 the owner began to make discoveries. He heard of a plan 

 devised by the Belgian foresters for planting the high moors near 

 Spa. He went to Belgium to see what they were doing. The first 

 thing he learnt was that the Belgian foresters had discarded the 

 Scots pine as hopeless for this sort of ground. They showed him a 

 plantation of this species forty years old and less than 20 feet high, 

 the failure of which had long deterred the Belgian Government from 

 making any more plantations in that region. Then they showed him 

 a flourishing spruce wood which fringed the same moor. Can the 

 soil, they asked, be good on one side of that straight fence and bad 

 on the other ? Is it not clear that the' spruce, if only you can get 

 it established, will grow on this moor though the Scots pine will not ? 

 iSow in the Inverness-shire plantation the spruce had been reckoned 

 a failure even among the failures. True, after ten years of obstinate 

 sickness, its complexion had slowly changed from yellow to green, 

 and it was beginning- here and there to add a few cautious inches to 

 its stature, but at that rate forestry brings neither pleasure nor 

 profit, and the owner and his forester had given up the spruce as a 

 bad job. Not so the Belgian foresters. Once assured that the spruce 

 would grow, they set about devising means to establish it quickly, 

 and this is the system at which, after many experiments, they arrived. 

 The ground had to be drained. A large turf taken from the drain 

 was laid on its back in the place where each plant was to go. When 

 the time came to plant, a hole about the size of a No. 4 flower-pot 

 was cut in each turf with a trowel-shaped spade. In this the plant 

 was placed with two handfuls — small handfuls, for the planters were 

 women — of sand or gravel mixed with basic slag in the proportion 

 of 7 of sand to 1 of slag. I cannot tell you why, but the plant 

 derives no benefit from the slag unless it is mixed with mineral soil. 

 The quantity of manure is very small. It tides the tree over its 

 initial difficulties, so that it makes and ripens a good grow^th the 

 first year, while the turf keeps it clear of weeds. Possibly it assists 

 the development of friendly bacteria in the soil. The decaying turf 

 and herbage beneath avail to support the young plant over the second 

 year. The third, it begins to take hold of the ground, sweetened 

 by this time by the action of the initial draining. I cannot show 

 you photograplis of this work in Belgium, but I can show you 

 the faithful imitation in Scotland. Sitka spruce, a tree from the 

 western coast of North America, was the species employed in this 

 case. The trees were planted as two-year seedlings about 3 inches 

 high. Two years later they showed some progress. In five years 

 they began to get into their stride. Now, in the eighth year from 

 planting, many of them are 10 feet high and beginning to make 

 rapid growth — a fair result on poor soil and 1300 feet above the sea. 



