1917] on Scientific Forestry for the United Kingdom G9 



The common spruce, which alone is used in Belgium, responds well 

 to the same treatment, thouiih it does not grow quite so rapidly. 



The use of manures in forestry may serve as a sample of questions 

 which await investigation. The views of British foresters on the 

 subject are vague aud inconsistent. Xearlj all use manures in one 

 form or another in their nurseries. Nearly all are opposed to their 

 use in planting. Some will tell you that they have no effect, and it 

 is, indeed, very easy to apply them in such a way that they can have 

 no effect. Others will tell you that their use is radically unsound, 

 because they are soon exhausted. Does it matter how soon they are 

 exhausted if they have done their work ? Who grudges the motor a 

 turn of the handle at starting ? I have in my mind an experiment 

 in which a few handf uls of sand mixed with basic slag were applied 

 to certaiu rows in a plantation, once more of Sitka spruce. The 

 manured trees are now 10 feet high, while their neighbours, left for 

 comparison without manure, are less than 2 feet. The recovery 

 of these last, I believe, to be only a matter of time, but they will 

 always be five to ten years behind the others. In forestry time is 

 money. 



People imagine, very naturally, that the native trees must be 

 better suited to our soil and climate than those imported from other 

 countries. That view is held on the Continent of Europe with some 

 reason. As regards this country it is quite mistaken, and is especially 

 untrue of the conifers, which concern us most, since nine-tenths of 

 the timber we consume is coniferous. In the glacial period the ice 

 banished all vegetation from this part of Europe. When plant life 

 returned after the retreat of the ice, only three conifers came back 

 to what are now the British Isles— the Scots pine, the yew and the 

 juniper, of which but one, the Scots pine, has any forest value. 

 Probably our climate was then drier and warmer, and therefore better 

 suited for the Scots pine, and less suited for other conifers than it is 

 now. We all love the native pine for its beauty. It still grows 

 well in the eastern counties from Norfolk right up to Cromarty Firth, 

 though not so well as in the drier climate of Saxony. Here and 

 there fragments of the old forests still fledge the Scots hills. But on 

 our western watershed the tree is undoubtedly dying out. In large 

 areas where it was once common it has completely disappeared, no 

 trace remaining except in place names and roots embedded in the 

 moss. Yet in the unobservant forestry of the nineteenth century, 

 when high or bare ground had to be afforested, this tree was per- 

 sistently planted simply because it was indigenous. Its failure has 

 given such enterprises a bad name. The larch, spruce and silver fir, 

 exotics from the mountains of Central Europe, are all better for such 

 work. These trees, and still more the conifers from the western 

 coast of North America, grow good timber at altitudes which are 

 quite beyond the reach of our native pine, and it is possible that 

 others from Japan and Western China will succeed as well. 



