232 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ment is but rarely found." This is not borne out by facts, as 

 regards the Lueneburger Heide. It is proved by statistics that 

 the percentage of absolutely poor soils in these regions is no 

 greater than in many parts of Prussia east of the Elbe, and that, 

 probably owing to more generous precipitation of moisture, the 

 results of agriculture are considerably higher than on similar 

 lands further in the interior. Even beet can be cultivated, at a 

 profit, on pure sand soils ; and all agricultural plants, with the 

 exception of the potato, are particularly free from disease of any 

 kind. To all of this I can testify from personal observations, 

 as, in my youth, I spent several years in various parts of 

 the Lueneburger Heide, occupied during a portion of this time 

 on these very afforestations, which are now dying out. 



Numerous analyses have moreover been made during recent 

 years of the soils in these heather areas, showing that they were 

 by no means so bad as had been universally believed without 

 sufficient evidence. Only the almost entire absence of lime is 

 typical. However, both pine and spruce are extraordinarily in- 

 dependent of this mineral, a fact which is proved by an analysis 

 of the soil in the Luess forest, where conifers of the largest dimen- 

 sions exist, and have existed as far as records go back, though 

 the soil contains only the sixtieth part of the amount of lime 

 which has been accepted for a pine soil of even the fifth class. 



When Graebner's handbook was publically challenged by a 

 practical forester, who for upwards of fifteen years had been 

 in charge of one of the heather-tract forest divisions, the author 

 replied that the critic made too much of his secondary statement 

 regarding the poverty of soils, though, throughout his book, 

 his arguments were prominently and almost entirely based on 

 the peculiar climatic conditions of the heather tracts ; and that 

 in this he was supported by the opinion of all authors who had 

 earnestly and seriously studied the heather question. This is 

 true enough, and the position of the school supporting this 

 argument was somewhat unassailable, until it was shown that 

 identical failures took place, and with the same certainty 

 and regularity, in afforestations of waste lands with conifers, 

 in localities which had none of the characteristics of the 

 Lueneburger Heide, or other heather tracts, and even on gneiss 

 and limestone soils. 



So long as it was believed that the calamity was purely a 

 local one, the origin of it was naturally looked for in local 



