234 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



From a scientific point of view I cannot imagine a more interest- 

 ing problem than the solution of this question, but it is not of 

 the same vital importance for the practical silviculturist. 



The general conditions of the Lueneburger Heide are, from 

 a forest point of view, by no means so complicated as they were 

 believed to be, but are on the contrary particularly simple 

 when stripped of the speculative theories by which they were 

 so long shrouded and befogged. The one all-prevailing fact 

 that neither pine nor spruce can be grown, with any reasonable 

 expectation of success, on any other but true forest soil, was un- 

 known till quite recently ; but, since this has been discovered 

 to be the case, the future rehabilitation of the forests in the 

 Lueneburger Heide, by rational forestry, looks by no means 

 so gloomy as it did a few years ago. It is naturally a sad 

 thought that all efforts made in this direction during nearly 

 150 years have had so few permanent results, and that there 

 is so little to show for the millions of money spent all over 

 Germany in the innumerable attempts to aff'orest waste lands 

 with pine, spruce, and other conifers. The seriousness of the 

 position is fully realised in Germany, but the question which 

 occupies the forester of the day is what is to be done in the 

 future. They take forestry earnestly in that country. 



The one fact which stands clearly out is that forest-soil 

 conditions can be created in a comparatively short time, by 

 planting the waste areas in the first instance with broad-leaved 

 species, which are not attacked by the root disease, and that, 

 when the ground has been for some time under cover, conifers 

 can be introduced without danger. The abandoned fields and 

 heather lands at Rosengarten, a Government possession, were 

 cultivated with beech, oak, and hornbeam about 1750. Thirty 

 to fifty years later both spruce and pine were introduced, grew 

 up to healthy maturity, and are still partly in existence. 



The intermixture of broad-leaved species, preferably of beech, 

 accacia, and hornbeam, has, generally speaking, given good 

 results, though there have been failures. The thinning out 

 of the coniferous crop on the ground and the inter-planting with 

 species unaffected by the disease, has proved efficacious in a 

 good many cases, but the results are by no means certain, more 

 especially when the disease has already set in. In such cases, 

 the only radical cure of the evil seems to be a gradual, but 

 entire elimination of the di.seased conifers, these being replaced 



