12 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



groves are the least accessible, which it has never paid to fell. 

 They were hopelessly out of reach at the time of my pilgrimage. 

 The forest officers said they knew specimens loo feet high and 

 9 feet in circumference. If the reader wishes to verify these 

 figures, he can only do so in July or August. In the lower 

 Mountain Pine forests it is possible to work four months in the 

 year. Here a system of Jardinage is practised, under which 

 no trees reach the age of loo. Figs. 2 and 3 show a fine 

 group in the Foret Communal de Matemale, at a turn of the 

 road between Mont Louis and Fourmigueres. These trees, 

 judging by. the stumps of some lately cut, are about 70 years 

 old. They are 55 feet high, and average 3 feet in girth breast 

 high. The largest measured 4 feet. The photographs, being 

 taken from lower ground, do injustice to the stems, which 

 are remarkably cylindrical. Fig. 4 is a group of Mountain 

 Pines in the Foret de la Matte, near Fourmigueres. Part of 

 this forest is of Scots pine, and in places the two species are 

 mixed. The reader may care to know how their growths 

 compare here and in the French Alps, where the two species 

 also meet. Up to 40 their growth in height is about equal. 

 At Brianqon it scarcely exceeds 40 feet for either species. But 

 in that time the Scots pine, if it has escaped injury from snow, 

 has invariably made more timber than its neighbour, measuring 

 on an average 2 ft. 3 ins. in girth breast high, while the 

 Mountain Pine only measures 1 ft. 8^ ins. On the buttresses of 

 Mont Canigou, where the Mountain Pine is mixed with stunted 

 silver fir, the growth is nearly double that above described. 

 After the age of 40 there is usually a marked falling off" in the 

 height-growth of the Mountain Pine. Up to that age it is a 

 singularly regular and slender tree (Figs. 6 and 7), never branch- 

 ing into gaps like the Scots pine. After 40 the stem swells, the 

 crown gets rounder, and the branches hang down, but the tree 

 seldom loses its narrow, columnar habit. A well-developed tree 

 of 70 years carries branches notably short and light for its 

 heavy cylindrical stem. At every stage the outline resembles 

 that of the Corsican pine. The root-system of the Mountain 

 Pine is shallower than that of the Scots pine, and at high 

 altitudes the Scots pine can only keep pace with its more frugal 

 cousin on the better soils. The condition of the two species, 

 after a winter of heavy snow like that of 1 906-1 907, is in marked 

 contrast. The Mountain Pine, among its crushed and splintered 



