28 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
are bound also to have clean, marketable timber; and these 
things are only now beginning to be understood and acted on 
by foresters. 
I knew a pure spruce wood about 55 years old, skirting a 
public road, in which the trees stood about 420 to the acre. 
Local popular opinion pronounced this so thick that the wood 
was considered ruined beyond hope, and was regarded as the 
sylvicultural scandal of the neighbourhood. Even the owner 
spoke in apologetic terms of this blot upon his estate, yet, as 
a matter of fact, the highest British forestry authorities will now 
say that 450 spruce to the acre at 55 years is a very thin crop 
indeed, except on land of exceptionally good quality for spruce. 
Unfortunately, this wood was entirely blown down in the storm 
of February 1903, and a timber merchant has a saw-mill now in 
the middle of the débris. The timber is cutting out very clean, 
and he is not at all inclined to criticise the owner harshly for 
his neglect of thinning. 
I am dealing at present altogether with shade-bearing kinds 
of trees, for reasons which I will give later; and with such the 
amount of yield per acre, and the quality of the yield, bear so 
strongly upon each other, that it is difficult to separate the 
subjects. I shall therefore include the third factor in the question 
of profit. 
3. MARKETABLE VALUE OF THE PRODUCE. 
When dealing with the prices of young trees, I mentioned some 
of the rarer conifers. In my opinion, some of these species are 
destined to play a part in British forestry that is not yet at all 
realised. The quality of the timber they produce in their native 
woods is known. It is the best timber from the most wonderful 
timber-producing region in the world. That they will produce 
a heavy yield per acre, no one who has travelled through those 
regions will deny. After a forest fire the seedlings come up 
almost as close as heather over the charred ground. The 
common mixture in some of the finest timber districts is red fir 
(Pseudotsuga Douglastt), western hemlock (Zsuga Mertensiana), 
and red cedar (Zhuya gigantea). On the burned area the young 
red fir takes the lead and keeps it. It will stand plenty of 
side-crushing, but requires overhead light and a free head. For 
the first 80 years it will average quite 2 feet growth in height 
per annum; and at 80 years the average circumference is from 
