CONTINENTAL NOTES — FRANCE. 6l 



young plants with the characteristics of its origin, but that these 

 characteristics disappear gradually with time until the trees 

 become precisely similar to the local race. Thus, at Les Barres, 

 Scots pine grown from Russian seed still showed at 50 years of 

 age signs of their origin, whereas at 80 to 90 years the difference 

 had disappeared, and they resembled the local Scots pine. 

 Again, at Nancy, Russian pines, 50 years old, while still showing 

 some traces of their origin, have steadily and progressively grown 

 more and more like the French pines. 



M. Cannon, an old planter in Central France, writes of his 

 experience with Scots pine seed. In 1871-72 he planted a large 

 area — some 120 acres — 4 feet by 4 feet, with plants from seed 

 bought at Orleans, but coming probably from Alsace or 

 Germany, since at that period other seed establishments within 

 commercial distance did not exist. The success was great. In 

 1875 he planted as before, but the plantation suffered very much 

 from a drought. Nevertheless this plantation is now quite good, 

 and the point is that the stems are good even where they were 

 accidentally thinned out by the drought. So, too, with the 

 thinned parts of the 187 1 plantation. Seeing this M. Cannon 

 planted in 1881-82, at 5 feet by 5 feet, with plants raised from seed 

 from Darmstadt. The result has been very bad. He thinks, 

 then, that before 1870 the demand for Scots pine seed being 

 slight only good seed from fine trees was used, but later, on 

 the demand increasing very greatly, seed was obtained from all 

 sorts and conditions of places and parent trees. 



To know the origin, therefore, of the seed is of great 

 importance, but what has gone before seems rather to show that 

 so long as the seed itself is good, at a suitable condition of 

 ripeness, from a strong parent, and properly handled in transit, 

 the place from which it comes does not so much matter. That 

 appears to me to be the inference, though it is not very 

 definite. 



II. M. Maire, Director of the forests of Eu and Aumale, in 

 Normandy, noticed in the drought of 191 1 very numerous 

 instances of splitting, resembling frost-crack, among spruce of 20 

 to 30 years of age, and always on the most thriving stems. 

 These particular spruce are growing at some 600 to 650 feet above 

 sea-level, which is, of course, far below their natural habitat, and 

 M. Maire hazards the suggestion that the damage was due to 

 this fact, and if so that it is one argument the more against 



