200 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



XVI. The Douglas Fir Plantation at Taymount 

 (with Photograph). 



By the Assistant Editor. 



Statistics relating to the growth of this plantation have been 

 published in the Transactions} but, so far, no illustration of it has 

 appeared therein ; and as there are, no doubt, many members of 

 the Society who have not had an opportunity of seeing this unique 

 example of coniferous sylviculture to whom such an illustration 

 would be welcome, I take the opportunity to give here a 

 reproduction of a photograph taken in the interior of the 

 plantation which, by the courtesy of the Earl of Mansfield, I 

 was able to obtain in the summer of 1901, two years before 

 the data for the statistics last published in the Transactions 

 were collected. 



The plantation was formed in i860, and it consisted originally 

 of a mixture of Douglas fir and larch, arranged on a system of 

 squares according to the following plan : — 



D L D L D 



L L L L L 



D L D L D 



L L L L L 



D L U L D 



The Douglas firs were planted in lines 1 2 feet apart, and at 

 intervals of 12 feet in the lines, and the intervening spaces 

 were filled up with larch, as indicated in the above plan, making 

 the common distance between the plants composing the planta- 

 tion 6 feet. Previous to 1897, however, all the larch and a 

 considerable number of the Douglas fir were removed, and 

 the trees now stand in lines 12 feet apart, and at varying 

 distances apart in the lines. 



The photograph was taken from a point in one of the lines 

 formerly occupied by the larch,, the stools of which, as may be 

 seen from the illustration, still remain to indicate the positions 

 of the trees; and it is to the fact of its having been taken from 

 this position that the avenue-like appearance presented by the 

 lines of Douglas fir in the illustration is due. 



' Vol. XII. p. 226; Vol. XVII. p. 269. 



