PLANTING OF QUICKER GROWING CONIFERS. 143 



head -room accordingly, but this has encouraged individual 

 timber increment, as the following measurements show : — 

 Most of the Japs measure in girth at breast-height more than 

 20 inches; some, near the outside, give 31, 32, 35, and 36 

 inches. One Jap growing near the outside measured 40 inches 

 in girth, and the head forester, Mr Garrett, computed the height 

 to be 40 feet. The Douglas and one or two Weymouth pines 

 in the adjoining plantation gave similar measurements. At 

 Ardgowan, in the 15-year-old (Swallow Brae) plantation, the 

 girths of the Japanese vary from 16 to 30 inches. I have not 

 found many trees to measure less than 16 inches. In the older 

 (22 years planted) plantation above Bankfoot, the Japs do not 

 measure so well, but that may be accounted for by the fact 

 that when the young plants arrived (as a gift) to be planted out 

 they had lost their tops on the journey and so began badly. 

 The trees nearest the outside, where they obtain the most light, 

 give the best girth measurements, viz. 20 to 27J inches. 

 (Incidentally, this little plantation shows the fallacy of the idea, 

 imported from the Continent and disseminated in some lecture 

 rooms at home, to the effect that Japanese larch fail in height- 

 growth after 16 years. A tree recently felled here showed 

 a height-measurement of 45 feet, and the annual growth for 

 the last five years showed an average of 22 inches.) 



But what kind of problem awaits us where we have planted 

 Douglas or Japs pure at too close intervals ? There can be 

 no value in the thinnings at an early age. On the other hand, 

 if all are left to grow together those that fail to be dominant 

 but just remain alive will be poor, skimpy poles, of little value, 

 as I have tried to show, in checking the branch-growth, while 

 they interfere with the root-room of their neighbours. In this 

 connection, it may be asked whether we are not too prone to 

 imagine that under "natural" forest conditions the spacing 

 problem solves itself in the best interests of the health of the 

 trees and their subsequent timber value? Such a belief may 

 be corrected by the following quotation from Bulletin 24 

 (part 1, page 57), issued in 1905 by the U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture, Division of Forestry, under the direction of the 

 well-known Mr Gifford Pinchot. Writing of the natural 

 American forest, he says: — "So great is the pressure when 

 dense groups of young trees are evenly matched in size and 

 rate of growth that it is not very unusual to find the progress 



