CONTINENTAL NOTES — FRANCE. l6l 



growth of forests. You will constantly find in the histories of 

 French forests that at each revision of the working-plan the 

 "possibility" prescribed is increased. 



IV. — M. Barbey has some notes on the tendency of spruce 

 to suffer from insects. Insects attack a tree which is weakened, 

 and a great source of weakness is that the species is so often 

 planted in situations not suited to it. As regards soil, whether 

 considered chemically or physically, the tree is inexacting, but 

 moisture is all-important. Broilliard says atmospheric moisture 

 is requisite. Jacquot says the soil must be fresh, rain frequent, 

 and the atmosphere damp. Jolyet doubts the almost universal 

 belief that it is the atmosphere which must be damp, since 

 the spruce naturally grows at a higher altitude than the silver 

 fir, that is to say, above the layer of mists to which the latter 

 seems confined ; but he considers that soil moisture is absolutely 

 necessary, because of the superficial rooting of the spruce. One 

 saw this illustrated in England in 192 1. In the drought many 

 young spruce, even when planted in a beech wood, died. 

 Their death seemed to be clearly due to the drought, and not 

 to the competition of the weeds, since previously these plants 

 had grown well enough. The silver firs in a similar situation 

 did not dry up, for their roots werit deeper. 



The worst insect enemies of the spruce are, according to 

 M. Barbey, Tomicus typographiis and T. chalcographus, L. ; 

 Hylesifius polygraphus, Reitt; Pissodes harcyjiiae, Hbrt. ; Col- 

 lidhim luridum, L. ; and Afithaxia quadripunctata, L. None of 

 these is to be found in Gillanders's book, but of course 

 M. Barbey is writing of Switzerland and France. 



v.— M. Martin Zede, of Anticosti (Canada), used to lose 

 half his plants (conifers and birch) when he put them out 

 without noticing the direction in which he faced them, but 

 from the moment he took to planting them out facing in the 

 same direction as they stood in his nursery the failures fell to 

 6 or 8 %. He imagines this to be due to the bark being thicker 

 on the north side than on the south, so that if faced in a 

 different direction when planted out the young plant is injuriously 

 affected by the sun, or other influences. This phenomenon 

 has long been known in France in the case of plants of a 

 fair si:£e. 



VI. — M. Hickel states his conviction that there are two 

 -separate "races" of Scots pine — the one of the greater part of 



