A VISIT TO GERMAN FORESTS. 433 



shade the ground, and so hinder the development of the heather. I 

 have seen a rank growth of heather very successfully kept back by 

 using the Black pine (Pinus austriaca). This was in Schleswig- 

 Holstein, where the tree grows very rapidly in youth, but falls off 

 or dies out at about twenty years old ; the spruces, which are in- 

 terplanted and of the same age, then succeed the pine, ultimately 

 forming pure woods of spruce. At Lintzel it was instructive to 

 see the treatment of forest-land which had been laid waste by 

 fire. The area had been cleared as quickly as possible, and 

 the small timber, cut into lengths of 3 feet, was being con- 

 verted into charcoal ; while prisoners from the convict station at 

 Oerrel were bundling all the lesser brushwood into faggots for 

 firewood. There is a light railway at Lintzel, and the level 

 ground allows of the steam-plough being used. The extensive 

 young woods stand in such jeopardy from fire that the erection of 

 a watch-tower with telephone connection has been considered a 

 necessity. 



One of the chief purposes of the Hanoverian legislature in 

 acquiring and afforesting land in the heath of Liineburg was to 

 afford to private owners of such land an object-lesson in good 

 forestry. It therefore interested me to see at Celle a property 

 which, under conditions similar to those obtaining at Lintzel, was 

 being transformed into forest. The owner is planting with Scots 

 pine a part of the moor on which sheep used to graze. All the 

 ground is not cultivated, strips only of 16 inches broad being 

 skim-ploughed to remove the sparse growth of heather, and the 

 soil is then stirred with the horse-plough to a depth of about 

 15 inches. Yearling plants are inserted in rows 3^ feet apart, 

 and 3 feet between the plants in the row. The partial ploughing 

 costs less than 10s., and the Scots pine seedlings about 8s. per 

 acre. 



Amongst the places visited in this excursion, the reviers of 

 Luchow, Clotze, Bischofswald, and Griinwalde may be mentioned. 

 The first of these provides an example of the wholesale damage 

 wrought by the caterpillars of the Nun Moth (Liparis monacha). 

 The visitation of this dreadful pest in the Luchow district alone 

 extended over an area of nearly 3000 acres, the forests on 1300 

 acres being utterly killed out. Pure coniferous forests, and par- 

 ticularly the older woods, are those most badly preyed upon. At 

 Clotze also, where 76 per cent, of the area is under Scots pine, 

 devastation by the Nun Moth is markedly noticeable, and as the 



