GROWING TIMBER FOR PROFIT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. 29 
4 to 5 feet at breast-height. In rate of growth, as to both 
height and girth, the hemlock and cedar are left behind, but 
they are patient shade-bearers, and creep steadily up, forming 
perhaps the densest forests in the world. If a red fir dies, or 
is cut or blown down, the increase of light brings up the waiting 
hemlock or cedar, like a soldier stepping into the place of a 
fallen comrade, so that the overhead roof remains unbroken. 
Several big lumber companies are now going back on land 
which was cut over or burned fifty or sixty years ago, and are 
cutting therefrom marketable natural second-growth timber. 
This seems an encouragement to us who have to begin at the 
beginning. While the admittedly splendid timber from these 
regions was being cut from giants 300 to 400 and 500 years 
old, it required some courage to advocate planting these species 
on our own hill-sides. Now, however, with the knowledge we 
are collecting of the timber as actually produced in Great 
Britain and Ireland, our confidence should increase. 
I have described these trees in their far-off home for a purpose. 
We have brought them from a climate very similar to our 
own,! with a rainfall of 50 to 70 inches brought up by the wet 
west winds from the Pacific. They have proved that they grow 
and thrive under favourable circumstances in this country, and 
there is every reason to believe that they will produce good 
timber 7 ¢hey are grown under suitable conditions; and this is 
what I want to emphasise. Already there has been a great deal 
of money wasted in planting these kinds of trees under conditions 
which have produced handsome trees, but poor in quality as 
timber. The United States Bureau of Forestry has carried out 
exhaustive tests with most of the native-grown timbers. It 
reports that, after testing a great number of specimens of red fir, 
or Oregon pine, ranging from 28 to 4 annual rings to the inch, 
it has been found that about 20 rings to the inch gives the 
best results; that from 12 to 15 rings to the inch may be called 
timber of good quality, suitable for ordinary building require- 
ments, but that the quality of the timber deteriorates in direct 
proportion as the rings gets wider; and, further, that all the 
timber with 7 rings or less to the inch has been found to be 
blemished with knots, which to a certain extent impair its 
1Ts such actually the case? Is not the summer-warmth much greater there ? 
And is not the intensity of the sunlight there also much greater throughout the 
annual period of vegetation ?>— Hon. ED. 
