518 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and his experience was that it was not a bit of use planting 

 unless the land were properly drained. It was perfectly useless 

 planting in low level mosses without drainage. Of course, he 

 did not mean the kind of drainage required for agricultural land. 

 For forest lands, surface draining, with a tolerably deep cutting 

 to run off the heavier water, answered all practical purposes. 

 He had to confess that his experience with timber had not been 

 a success. Some sixteen years ago he purchased a little place 

 called Blair, and there was a great quantity of blown timber on 

 it. He got a travelling saw-mill to saw it up, and that cost £54, 

 but when he tried to dispose of the sawn-up wood the highest 

 offer he could get for it was £23, 15s. He found, too, that in 

 the erection of fences it was no use putting in Scots fir or 

 spruce posts, which required renewal every few years. It was 

 far better to put in larch posts or iron bars. Then in the 

 management of their woods they must be careful to wire out the 

 rabbits, or their labour would be in vain, and they must keep 

 out the sheep as well, or they would destroy the young trees. 

 It was very important, also, that they should plant only the 

 kinds of trees suited to the soil and climate. He (the speaker) 

 had once travelled to America with a Yankee who had come 

 over here to buy the best hardwood for the building of Pullman 

 cars. The Yankee heard that the finest oaks in the world were 

 these in the Windsor Forest, and he went to Windsor to see 

 them. He found the Windsor oaks were as good as he had 

 been told they were, but he was disappointed because the 

 Queen's Commissioner rejected his overtures to purchase them, 

 and he said, "There are only two things I can't buy in this 

 country; I can't buy up the judges, and I can't buy the oaks in 

 the Windsor Forest." 



Mr Leven, Auchencruive, said that the ash sprang so readily 

 from the seed, and in such numbers, that in some plantations 

 it came up like beans, and they got splendid specimens of it 

 grown naturally, but it grew to be something in the nature of a 

 fishing-rod in appearance. The ash, however, responded readily 

 to a little judicious thinning at twenty-five to thirty years of 

 age, and they could get an excellent return from well-grown 

 ash. 



Mr Crozier, Durris, said that larch disease was practically 

 unknown in old times. If larch could be grown and kept 

 healthy up to thirty years old, it would be good policy to plant 



