English Timber and Underwood. 127 



are capable of early return, but it is inadvisable to enumerate 

 them without the necessary reservations. 



All trees have their individual requirements, not only as to 

 soil and conditions, but also as to the most suitable methods 

 of production and treatment. The best distance apart to plant 

 any variety is a detail that has not received sufficient attention. 

 We have been, up to the present, far too much inclined to 

 assume that all trees should be planted alike. Larch certainly 

 requires more open planting and treatment in its early years 

 than Scots pine, oak or beech, and the same may be said of 

 several other varieties. The principal factors are branch 

 suppression, complete canopy, height growth, and survival of 

 the fittest for mature crop. The persistency of side branches 

 and their decay when suppressed varies so much with different 

 trees that this fact alone points to the need for different 

 treatment. The well-developed tree on the margin of a wood 

 often pays better than the close-grown specimen further in, a 

 fact which calls for more discussion and investigation, but this 

 must not be construed as advocating too open planting. 



Far greater care must be taken in future with the selection 

 and treatment of the seeds before sowing and selecting the 

 best of the crop of seedlings for planting. Heredity plays as 

 important a part in trees as in animals, and selection of the 

 fittest in the nursery would save considerable expense and 

 disappointment in later years. 



The compound interest argument is often advanced against 

 planting, but, if the purely commercial aspect is to be con- 

 sidered, surely a better argument would be to apply compound 

 interest to the present loss of return from many existing woods. 



It is scarcely fair to judge forestry by much that has been 

 done under that name in the past. Now that the outlook is 

 much brighter and we can learn valuable lessons from our 

 mistakes, is it too much to hope for far more attention and 

 sympathetic consideration of the subject in the future ? Only 

 in recent years have the importance and possibilities of forestry 

 been realised, and this accounts for its being the most neg- 

 lected of all branches of rural economy. Many people who 

 would otherwise take an interest in the subject are prevented 

 from doing so by the difficulty of knowing how to begin. In 

 the circumstances, one may be pardoned for suggesting that 

 they should join the Royal English Arboricultural Society, the 

 object of which is to encourage the subject and to apply the 

 policy of "practice with science" to the production of trees in 

 England. 



The Future Price op Timber. 



The glutting of our markets with cheap foreign timber 

 in the past had a fearful effect on the English timber and 



