520 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



disease being the right one. He had often noticed that before 

 the blister appeared, they had experienced a bad attack of 

 the bug. 



Mr Munro Ferguson said many eminent authorities told them 

 that there was less liability to larch disease when the larches 

 were not grown in pure woods, but were mixed with beech 

 and Douglas fir. Any experience that he had confirmed this 

 idea, but he knew of no reason why the growing of beech 

 or Douglas fir, along with the larch, should diminish the liability 

 to attack from larch disease and bugs. 



Mr Crabbe, Glamis, said he had always found that late spring 

 frosts were followed by larch disease where the trees were 

 growing on a southern exposure, so that they came into leaf 

 early. He had a large plantation thirty years old on the high 

 ground, where the trees did not come into leaf so early as in the 

 lower and more southerly exposures, and the trees on these higher 

 grounds were all free from the disease. When the trees were 

 injured in their growth by late frosts or other causes, they were 

 always liable to succumb to disease. 



Mr Alex. Milne (of Messrs Dickson & Sons, Edinburgh) said 

 that with regard to the diseases affecting timber crops, he 

 thought a great many of these diseases were caused by climatic 

 influences. In this country they had such a treacherous climate 

 that they had often half a dozen different kinds of weather in a 

 week, or even in a day. When a tree or an animal got into 

 a weakened state through any cause, it was all the less able to 

 resist any attack, and all the more liable to succumb to disease. 

 He held that they did not plant enough forest lands in this 

 country, and he said that the Board of Agriculture had issued 

 a return showing that the value of the timber imported into this 

 country last year had reached the enormous total of thirty-nine 

 millions sterling. Mr Milne's figures, on this point, were at once 

 challenged bj r several members of the party, but he stood to his 

 guns, and insisted that he had quoted correctly enough from the 

 return issued by the Board. 



Mr J. Badenach Nicolson of Glenbervie, said it would be 

 very interesting if the foresters present would give their views 

 as to the merits of home-grown larch seed as compared with 

 foreign larch seed. As to the larch disease being caused by 

 spring frosts, he had to point out that the larch did perfectly 

 well in this country for the first one hundred and fifty years 



