NOTES AND QUERIES, 99 
of larch and shade-bearers to produce the best quality of all 
classes of timber. 
It may be interesting, further, to describe the alternative series 
of experiments in mixed plantations designed rather to protect 
larch from disease than with regard to the fate of other varieties 
employed. These were initiated by Colonel Bailey, and through 
his advice a number of plots were formed of such mixtures as 
larch, beech, spruce, and silver fir; Scots pine with larch at 
20 feet intervals, pitted and notched; spruce and larch; larch 
pitted and notched in adjacent lots. The experiments in notch- 
ing and pitting were designed to ascertain whether, by quicker 
growth in the pits, the larch would more readily escape disease ; 
there is little difference in the result after seven years’ growth, 
and the cost of pitting and notching is respectively as £ 2, rgs. 6d. 
to 13s. 9d. the acre, Both systems are now practically abandoned 
for dibbling two-year seedlings, 
The silver fir, on which Colonel Bailey most properly relied for 
larch mixtures, was raised in great numbers, but it became useless 
from aphis: this disaster led to much delay and to some years of 
nursery work to find substitutes, spruce being too slow and not 
the best shade-bearer, and beech too uncertain in value for 
general use. After six or eight seasons, Douglas fir, Menzies 
spruce, Zsuga Mertensiana, Thuya gigantea, Abies grandis, and 
Lawson cypress were selected as the most promising varieties for 
ordinary sylviculture; the cost of some of them does not much 
exceed that of Scots pine and spruce. Others are still being 
tried. Some two hundred acres of larch are more or less mixed 
with these Coniferz; in part both species are planted simul- 
taneously, in part blanks among pure larch are filled in with 
shade-bearers, in part a designedly-thin crop of larch is filled in 
with shade-bearers after the lapse of two or three years, which 
gives it, as a light-demander, the right amount of start. The 
value of this work is yet to be determined, but it is plain, from 
the 20-year-old plot, that a mixture of larch and Douglas fir 
produces a heavy crop of excellent timber of both kinds, that the 
Douglas fir is not sufficiently cleaned, and that, if the race is 
close, the Douglas fir inclines to be too swift. It is still too soon 
to say whether, if the larch is given a start, the leaders of the 
shade-bearers will be sufficiently clear, but this seems likely. 
This mixture well deserves trouble, especially where the larch 
needs help on second-class larch soils. The mixture of Menzies 
