218 Plantations and Home Nurseries Competition, 1912. 



removed in the thinnings, the liaixhvoods shall completely 

 occupy the gromid at 12 ft. intervals. In our opinion, however, 

 this system of management leaves much to be desired. If one 

 looks over an area of ground planted entirely with one species, 

 one will have no difficulty in seeing that within a few years 

 a certain proportion of the trees have grown much more 

 vigorously than the others, and it is these vigorous individuals 

 which, in a pure wood, one would retain to form the later 

 thinnings and final crop. In other words, in a pure wood one 

 has abundant opportunity for selecting strong plants which can 

 be retained, and of rejecting — that is to say, of clearing out in 

 the earlier thinnings — feeble and badly formed specimens 

 which can hold out no prospect of giving final satisfaction. 

 But if hardwoods are planted at 12 ft. intervals, say 300 to 350 

 per acre, they must all be retained, no matter whether they are 

 vigorous or feeble, dwarfed or unhealthy. Many cases were 

 brought to our notice where a large proportion of the hard- 

 woods were in such an unsatisfactory condition that, although 

 a pure wood of hardwoods would finally be left on the ground, 

 the volume and quality of the resultant timber could not fail 

 to be thoroughly unsatisfactory. If in place of planting the 

 hardwoods at 12 ft. intervals the whole stocking had been done 

 with hardwoods, the individuals left to occupy the ground, say 

 at thirty or forty years, would undoubtedly be much more 

 promising than under the present system. But by planting pure 

 hardwoods one loses the advantage of useful and remunerative 

 larch thinnings, and the attention of foresters should, therefore, 

 be given to attempting to secure both objects, namely, consider- 

 able latitude for selection, and a fair return about the twentieth 

 year from the thinnings. These objects can perhaps best be 

 combined either by planting nothing but hardwoods in every 

 third or fourth row, with the rest of the ground filled up with 

 larch, or by planting the hardwoods in groups of G to 10, 

 at 12 to 20 ft. intervals, and filling up with larch. In this 

 way a much freer hand would be given to selection of the 

 hardwoods to be finally retained ; and if the yield of larch 

 thinnings was somewhat reduced, we believe that the final 

 result would be more satisfactory. If the present system is 

 persisted in, it would at least be an improvement if the 

 hardwood plants to be used in sheltered situations were;allowed 

 to grow in the nursery lines until they are six years old, by 

 which time the individuals possessing strong constitutional 

 vigour could be easily picked out, and only these would be used 

 for planting at 12 ft. intervals, the plants rejected in- the 

 nursery being burned, or, in the case of beech at least, used for 

 forming hedges. Although this suggestion is put forward as 

 an improvement upon the present method, it cannot be said to 



