42 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
them the best environment for their protection against disease, 
though even then canker could hardly be hoped to be 
exterminated locally. But it would certainly be more likely to 
combat the disease than is the system of planting pure larch 
thickly, as now practised. It would, of course, probably 
necessitate very careful thinning—now of larch, now of the other 
conifers—and the forecast of future revenue might seem less 
than the present system of pure planting has hitherto actually 
yielded ; but the present returns will hardly continue so favour- 
able if the opinion should prove correct that the Novar system 
must tend to make the disease more prevalent locally than it 
already is. 
And in conclusion, lest there should be any possibility of 
doubt about the matter, I would expressly state that the question 
here raised is not whether “the Novar system” is, or is not, 
the most profitable for the owner—that is a matter with which 
I have no concern whatever. That it certainly seems to be 
the most remunerative is proved by the fact that it has been 
tried, found successful, and adopted by the landowner as the 
method likely to bring him in most profit. That merely proves, 
however, that, under the given local conditions at Novar, it pays 
better to grow pure crops of diseased larch, of which go per cent. 
have to be cut out as 16- to 20-year-old cankered poles, than to 
raise clean healthy crops, chiefly formed of other kinds of trees, 
for which the local demand is not so favourable. But the fact 
remains, that in acting thus Mr Munro Ferguson seems to me 
to be deliberately encouraging the spread of the larch-canker 
disease throughout all the district of which the Novar larch 
plantations form the central point. That is the important 
matter about which I would invite discussion. 
