SOME ASPECTS OF THE EXCURSION TO GERMANY. 173 
of pasture and meadow, and the rich yellow of the ripened corn, 
and tended to relieve the monotony attaching to a level tract of 
country. The Scots pine seems to find a congenial home on the 
poorer soils of these plains, as it occupies large areas, sometimes 
wide apart, sometimes c’oser together, thus showing the varying 
quality of the soil to be met with—the pine occupying land unfit 
for agriculture. The bulk of these pine woods, where pure, are 
worked on the even-aged high forest system, but occasionally 
with standards, as well as with a soil-protection wood. Young 
Scots pine woods are slightly thinned for the first time at the 
age of twenty-five to thirty years, and every fifth or sixth year 
thereafter. The young wood, up to a certain stage, will in itself 
improve and protect the soil, but after being opened up by 
thinning it will cease to act in this way ; and in order that the 
soil may not“be reduced in quality at the end of the rotation, a 
soil-protection wood is frequently introduced. That takes place 
when the wood reaches the age of sixty or seventy years, and is 
usually of beech or hornbeam, the former being the most common. 
Seeding is generally adopted, the ground being prepared according 
to its condition, either by hoeing or digging patches a couple of 
feet wide, at two or three feet intervals, over the area to be 
stocked. The seeds are sown in these, and as a rule a good 
undergrowth springs up, which succeeds wonderfully under the 
shade of the firs. The rotation of the Scots pine ranges from 
eighty years on low-class soils to one hundred and twenty years 
on the higher class, and strips of eighty yards or so in width are 
cut from north to south on the east or lee side of the wood. 
After the roots are extracted, and the ground prepared by plough- 
ing, harrowing, or otherwise, an insect trap is made round the 
section in the form of a narrow trench about six inches wide by 
nine inches deep, with perpendicular sides, and at intervals of 
about ten yards, openings are formed in the bottom, as a pitfall 
into which the beetles drop as they move along the trench in 
their endeavour to escape. This, as was evident by the numerous 
insects seen in these openings, proves a most effective method 
of excluding them from the cleared ground. The restocking is 
either by seeding or planting, but in either case no further fellings 
are made in the neighbourhood until the young growth has been 
fairly established, when another section adjoining is taken in 
band. For the purpose of obtaining timber of a large size, a few 
selected trees per acre are left as standards over another rotation. 
