GROWTH OF THE SITKA SPRUCE AND OTHER TREES. I 59 



realised. My limited experience of realising grown timber 

 crops is, however, not encouraging. A few years ago, about 

 a dozen of the best sycamores were cut and sold to a local 

 wood merchant, and all I got out of him was a new farm cart, 

 in payment for the lot ! In another case, the best price I was 

 offered by a well-known firm of wood merchants in Larbert for 

 over TOO old beeches planted in a glen on my Banton estate 

 more than a century ago, was the magnificent sum of ;!^35. 

 Needless to say, the wood is still standing. 



The moral apparently is that beech, sycamore, and elm have 

 ceased to be so valuable in the arts as they were in our grand- 

 fathers' times. In Germany the beech in the Bavarian forests, 

 which the Society visited last autumn, is used mainly for fuel, 

 and in our country a century hence, when the coal is becoming 

 exhausted, beech forests planted now may be mainly required, 

 not for structural work or implements, but to eke out our 

 grandchildren's domestic supply of dear coal. 



The trees planted in 1889 were chiefly sycamore, black 

 Italian and balsam poplar, elm, Austrian pine, Douglas, larch, 

 and Norway spruce. The larches were planted on old colliery 

 " blaes bings," and the broad-leaved trees on the surrounding 

 ground. After twenty-one years the black Italian poplars have 

 shot up to heights of from 40 to 50 feet, and the girth at breast- 

 height is now from 27 to 34 inches. Of all trees this appears 

 to grow fastest in this district, and for some purposes, such 

 as pulp-making, it may be the most useful species to cultivate. 

 Unlike the black Italian, which remains perfectly healthy, the 

 balsam poplar generally begins about the tenth year to show 

 canker, near the root or a few feet up the stem, and this goes on 

 developing till the tree dies off, leaving the ground full of roots 

 and with suckers very troublesome to eradicate. Except for 

 shelter or to act as a nurse to young trees, the balsam poplar 

 is, in my experience, a perfectly useless tree to cultivate. The 

 sycamores have grown well, but not so fast as the poplars. 

 They have developed comparatively clean poles, 35 to 40 feet 

 high, with a girth of 15 to 16 inches, or about half that of the 

 poplars. This has recently been increasing at the rate of half 

 an inch per annum, and some of the trees have been observed to 

 add as much as 6 feet to their height in a good season. The 

 Austrian pines, although overshadowed by the faster-growing 

 trees, have held their own, but have a girth of only 8| to 



