188 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
is cleared of weevils by hand-picking. As already stated, this 
sort of trap is of service upon land of a sandy nature, but would 
be useless in the case of most of our woodlands at home, as the 
weevils would easily climb out of a trench made in our gravelly 
soils. f 
Generally, we are of opinion that Scottish foresters can very well 
hold their own with the Germans so far as planting is concerned, 
but we are a long way behind them in scientific knowledge. Nor 
do we produce the clean marketable timber which they do in 
Germany, and this simply because we over-thin our woods, and in 
some cases do not plant them thick enough to begin with. We 
did not learn that the German forest officers do anything in the 
way of manufacturing the timber. We think this is a question 
which our home foresters should study, because a man should 
know how to convert his crop to the best advantage after he 
has got it up; and unless a forester has a fair knowledge of what 
the crop he has for sale is best adapted for, and what it would cost 
to place it with the consumer, he cannot know whether he is 
receiving full value for his wood or not. 
We have heard it remarked that we have not enough sunshine 
in this country to grow our trees so thickly as they do in Germany. 
The pieces of natural grown Scots fir woods which we have seen at 
home were never thinned, and, when fully matured, a horse could 
not pass between the stems, and when cut and sawn up pro- 
duced boards the like of which we have never seen produced from 
thinned woods. We have also seen the same thing with planted 
beech woods. A piece which was in a remote situation, difficult 
of access, and was said to have been neglected, produced long clean 
stems of wood, the like of which could not be got in any of the 
woods which were supposed to be under good management. With 
the natural firs there had been sunshine enough to produce good 
timber, and if this was so in the past, why can it not be the same 
in the future? We are a long way from another Ice age, at least 
we hope we are. 
We have further noticed that there is not the indiscriminate 
mixtures of different kinds of trees in Germany that we often find 
at home. The Germans appear to believe more in grouping or 
planting an entire wood of any one kind, if the soil appears to be 
best adapted for that kind. 
