CONTINENTAL NOTES FRANCE. 



33 



from the great frost the whole had been recovered. All of 

 which was really wonderful work. The soul of it was a 

 M. Boucard, a retired forest officer, whose name deserves to 

 go down to posterity. Latterly, the Vancouver Douglas and 

 Corsican (and Calabrian) pine are being increasingly and 

 successfully planted. 



The plantations of the Sologne have found a satisfactory 

 market for pit-props in the mines of north France, after passing 

 through a period when they captured the market of the Paris 

 bakeries till more or less dispossessed by coke and the influx 

 of wood from elsewhere. One supposes that the fact that 

 pit-props are cut from small trees is the reason for there being 

 no mention of resin-tapping, although the Maritime pine is 

 the tree which produces so much resin in the by no means 

 distant Landes. 



VI. M. Jolyet noticed that his spruce, which are growing 

 at an altitude below their natural habitat, were suffering, first 

 from the drought, and then from the Nematus abietum (? abietinus). 

 He suggests that spruce should not be grown pure below its 

 true zone of altitude. Being surface-rooted it quickly absorbs 

 all the surface moisture, but if scattered among deep-rooted 

 deciduous trees, such as beech or sycamore, which seek for 

 water in a different layer of the soil, the difficulty would 

 disappear. He seems to have an affection for the spruce, 

 while admitting that perhaps Vancouver Douglas might 

 preferably take its place. It seems to me that in my country 

 (the Chilterns) the spruce is not very satisfactory, and that 

 when there is sufficient shelter against wind the Douglas would 

 certainly be preferable, or when there is wind that the Sitka should 

 replace it. Not that the spruce does not make good stems 

 when it gets away, but it is very slow in starting, and even 

 inside beech woods is troubled by drought, whereas the Douglas 

 and Sitka have not these disadvantages, and they both yield 

 better timber. Though these two have their enemies, the spruce 

 seems to have more. If, however, one desires to have spruce 

 M. Jolyet's advice appears sound, namely, that the seeds 

 should be obtained from trees of the locality, because these 

 will be more likely to give us plants that have become 

 acclimatised. He says that the spruce is particularly liable 

 to variation, so that the species would be likely to arrive 



VOL. XXXVIIL PART L C 



