NOTES AND QUERIES. 333 



on mortgage at 4 or 4| per cent., or 4^ per cent, inclusive of ^ per 

 cent, sinking fund for gradual amortisation. 



Looked at from another point of view, we may say that the 

 German system of co-operative agricultural banking has the effect 

 of running a flood of capital amounting to some seventy million 

 of pounds sterling over the land of the co-operating farmers every 

 twelve months (but increasing in amount every year), fertilising 

 the land and enriching the cultivators, most of which, in the 

 absence of this system, would flow in other directions or be 

 unfruitfully hoarded. 



The Japanese Larch and the Larch Disease. 



Professor Schwappach writes: — In his memoir (1891) on 

 planting with foreign trees, he stated that Larix lejAolepis 

 seemed remarkably resistant to the bite of Caleophora laricinella 

 and to larch canker (Krebs), and that in most cases it seemed 

 not to be attacked by either. In the few districts where it had 

 been attacked by the moth, it seemed to suffer much less damage 

 than the European larch, doubtless on account of its having 

 stronger and more fleshy leaves. When this was written it was 

 justified by the fact that out of twenty-four reports only two 

 recorded the presence of canker, and the author himself had seen 

 no sign of it. He has since written to the two head foresters 

 who reported the presence of canker in 1890. From one of 

 these only (at Homburg, near Fi-ankfurt) has he received speci- 

 mens. In Homburg Larix leptolejns is planted over a wide area, 

 but it is only a group of trees planted on poor soil that is affected 

 by canker; there, however, the disease is very bad. No other 

 locality in West Prussia shows canker upon Larix leptolepis. In 

 the neighbouring forestry department of Chorin a few specimens 

 have been found. The author is therefore of opinion that 

 although on good ground Larix leptolepis is more i-esistant to 

 canker than the European larch, yet it cannot be said to be 

 immune. In Germany the planting of Larix leptolepis was 

 begun in 1887, so that the oldest trees ai-e sixteen years old. 

 The future fate of these trees is therefore still uncertain. For 

 Scotland he advises that too great confidence t-hould not be placed 

 in the tree, and especially that it should not be planted alone, 

 but mixed with Pseudotsuga Douglasii, Picea sitchensis, and Picea 

 pungens, especially in large woods. 



