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land Islands Company, made what was probably the mo$1 deter- 

 mined attempt that has yet been undertaken to establish a 

 plantation of trees in the Islands. Unfortunately he left the 

 Islands in 1898 and was thus unable to give the young trees per- 

 sonal attention. They, however, made fairly good progress and 

 some reached the height of 30 ft. A few years ago they were re- 

 pp ported to have lost their heads as soon as they rose above their 



shelter.* Mr. Blake, in giving Kew the benefit of his experience 



writes i " I may be optimistic but I honestly believe many places 

 in the Falklands could be planted with trees and that they would 

 flourish. It must always be remembered in those latitudes 

 that the further west one travels the warmer the climate and 

 that the north coast of the Islands is warmer than the 

 southern shores. This, no doubt, is accounted for by the 

 cold current which runs continuously from west to east, passing 1 

 south of the Islands; this is not felt on the northern coasts, 

 fear the situation of Port Stanley is not at all suitable for tree 

 raising experiments. I think, therefore, in making experiments 

 these should be carried out on the north coast of the West Island. 

 Native bushes like the Fachina, Veronica and Diddle-dee grow 

 far larger in the north of the West Island, also there is a marked 

 difference in some of the grasses and herbs, all going to show 

 that the climate on the west is milder than on the east. . . . 

 In Tierra del Fuego, with a climate far more rigorous than 

 ours, bushes and trees grow freely. I have been able to bring 

 a few of these hushes to the Islands — the Antarctic Beech 

 (tVothofagus spp.), a kind of Laurel {Laurelia serrata), and 

 Calif ate (Berberis buxifolia) — they grow freely at Hill Cove, on 

 the West Island. My first experiment was taking out some small 

 Austrian Pines. Many survived the voyage and grew quite 



well, then I tried seeds of Austrian and Scots Pines and had no 

 difficulty with them. I transplanted several hundreds when 

 they were about 6 in. high in 1898 [apparently the trees 

 mentioned by Skottsberg] when I came home, but my manager 

 took more interest in breaking land for hay and green corn crops 



than in my hobby I tried in 1914 to engage a man 



who would be capable of carrying out experiments for me in 

 the Islands but without success : what is needed is a good 

 nurseryman, one accustomed to raising trees from seed, and 



a man who would know when and how to transplant 



There are no men in the Islands with knowledge of the craft, 

 and again it is so long before there are any tangible results 



Ground must be prepared by ploughing and the rubbish must 

 be cleared off. The soil in the best ground is a mass of roots, 

 and to insure some measure of success the experiments should 

 be made on a fairly large scale, ploughing and cleaning the 

 ground is a laborious process and people in the Falklands are 

 hardly in a position to sink the required capital. I don't 

 think there would be much trouble over wind-breaks if suit- 

 able ground were selected in the valleys but I doubt if any 

 ood results would be obtained by planting on the ridge-* when- 

 hard clay is generally found 6 or 9 in. below the surface. Gorse 



Carl Skotrsber?, A Botanical Survev of the Falkland Islands, 1P07-1P09. 



£T 



