3-44 Major F. Bailey's Forest Tour 



des Cerennes and Austrian pine, which would be pro- 

 jjerly located on limestone not on granite, and with oak 

 {Q. sessilijlora), the acorns of the latter being deep-sown, in 

 order to protect them from frost and rats. We had been 

 passing through a private estate ; and as we entered the 

 Government forest we were struck with its much better 

 condition, due to the needful thinnings having been made 

 among the pines, which do not thrive when grown in 

 dense masses ; they had been too long neglected in the 

 private forest, and the young trees had suffered much from 

 this cause. Here the seed from which the wings had been 

 broken off was sown broadcast during the winter ; and 

 having been protected from extreme cold by the snow, it 

 came up in the spring. We saw a small nursery of Austrian 

 pines, which are to be used lower down, and some planta- 

 tions of Scotch pine, larch, and birch. The plants are not 

 put out in lines, but are inserted wherever sufficient 

 soil can be found for them ; in some places oak had been 

 sown in patches and pine broadcast. At an altitude of 

 about 4000 feet, we entered a natural beech forest, which, 

 before protection was commenced, had been ruined by 

 pasture and over-cutting; when we were there, however, it 

 was throwing up some good coppice-shoots, and will some 

 day again be valuable. Higher up, on an exposed but 

 gentle slope, we came upon a plantation of beech and silver 

 fir (both species of heavy cover) made in open ground 

 without any shelter. This is an experiment only, and 

 its success is not certain ; but the sowings have been 

 managed in a very ingenious manner, and it seems quite 

 possible that, in the moist atmosphere at this altitude, 

 they ^vill be successful. Holes 2 feet by 1 foot, and 

 2 feet deep, were dug, and then half-filled with loose 

 earth, a shelter being made on the south-west side by 

 building up the turf with some stones in the form of a 

 little roughly made wall. The seeds were sown in this 

 corner of the hole, and the young plants grow up under 

 shelter of its sides, and of the little wall at the surface, 

 until they are five years old. All this time the tops are 

 appearing outside the holes, and are somewhat exposed to 

 the sun; but as the roots are far down, in, comparatively 

 speaking, moist soil, and as the stems are also protected 



