98 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
NOTES AND QUBRtE., 
SYLVICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS AT NOVAR. 
The larch experiments at Novar originated from an acre plot 
of mixed larch and Douglas fir casually planted twenty years ago 
on a corner of shingly arable land of small agricultural value. 
After a dozen or fifteen years of fast growth, the larch was 
singularly free from aphis and blister. Patches of larch with 
which natural beech was intermingled were also comparatively 
immune; and so the question presented itself whether larch 
should be grown pure or mixed, and, if mixed, then how? That 
is the inquiry pursued here on empirical lines, but always on the 
assumption that thick screens of shade-bearers round larch in 
clumps or singly tend to hinder the distribution of the spores of 
Peziza Waillkommiz. 
Alongside of these experiments there has been the alternative 
two-story policy, already admirably described in the Zvansac- 
tions, which consists of a larch crop underplanted with shade- 
bearers at 15 or 20 years old. It is the opinion of those 
who have managed these plantations for 25 years, that this 
system promises well wherever larch comes away freely and is 
likely to mature, as to which there has been no difficulty for the 
last 130 years at Novar. It is true that it is a system evolved 
by comparatively ignorant persons, yet in this particular enterprise 
empirical judgment is probably more reliable than that of any 
expert. For experiments of any kind in preventing larch disease, 
save by thin cropping or mixed plantations, is extremely limited ; 
exotic Coniferze have never before been grown so cheaply as to 
permit their use in sylviculture ; while little can be taught even 
in the country of sylviculture, larch being seldom seen in Germany 
from Berlin to Hamburg or from Dresden to Strassburg. At any 
rate, experimental results at Novar promise so well that many 
hundred acres of pure larch will be treated in the manner already 
described, with the object of getting the largest combined crop 
