lO TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



It is to be hoped that Sir Hugh's advice will lead to 

 experiments in wide planting at distances from 6 feet to 

 8 feet; it is only by practical experiment that the best distance 

 for any locality can be found. 



It will take very much longer to find out the answer to the 

 other part of the question — what is the best planting distance 

 for the production of timber of the best quality ? At the present 

 time, the private individual may well be inclined to say — "Give 

 me the largest possible bulk at the shortest possible rotation 

 and let the Forestry Commission produce timber of the best 

 quality a hundred years hence if it can." But the very fact 

 that short rotations are so attractive may tend in future to 

 increase the price of mature timber of high quality. 



We do not know the exact conditions under which the 

 magnificent stands of Douglas fir have grown up on the Pacific 

 Coast of North America. But we know this, that the very 

 finest stands are to be found on deep fertile soil, which we in 

 this country should never think of putting under timber. We 

 can only guess at the early history of the natural forests. 

 Nature sows trees as thickly as we do corn, so thickly that 

 sometimes on poor soil the result at the end of a hundred years 

 or more is a thicket of weakly stems not worth cutting down 

 (see Mr Kay's interesting article on the Jack pines in the 

 November number of the Transactions, and Sir Hugh Shaw 

 Stewart's quotation from Mr Gifford Pinchot). 



But nature is not always a bungler, and natural forests are 

 capable of producing the very finest of timber, in sizes with 

 which economic forestry cannot compete. 



No true comparison is possible between the most densely 

 stocked young plantation and the young crop resulting from 

 a successful natural seeding. The thickest planting likely to 

 be made is at 3 feet apart, or 4840 plants to the acre regularly 

 distributed, against ten, twenty, or thirty times that number 

 of seedling trees irregularly distributed. 



The initial development of the plantation will be quick and 

 that of the seedling growth will be relatively slow, and yet 

 active competition between individuals in the plantation will 

 not begin till the fifth or sixth year after planting, while some 

 of the seedlings will have been in competition from the moment 

 of germination, and the suppression of the weaklings will begin 

 at a very early age. 



