THE NEW FORESTRY. 49 



The next example relates to the Douglas fir " The 

 Forester," p. 355. This tree is to be planted "thirty feet 

 apart as the permanent crop, and made up with larch as 

 nurses to five feet over all " the larch to be removed in about 

 twenty years, so that " a complete plantation of this tree 

 alone could be secured." Now here we have one of the most 

 vigorous evergreen species known nursed by a deciduous 

 species every way weaker than itself, and the permanent crop 

 planted ten yards asunder for the production of timber. Plan- 

 tations of Douglas fir raised on this principle are now to be 

 seen, the worst examples of timber culture probably to be 

 found anywhere the trees tapering rapidly in shape and 

 forming a mass of huge knots from top to bottom. In many 

 cases the plan has defeated itself, and now plantations are to 

 be seen in which the nurses have become the permanent and 

 better crop, with here and there a hard-wood to denote the 

 original purpose of the planter. We do not recommend nurses 

 at all, but, instead, the planting, sufficiently thick, of the per- 

 manent crop, so as to establish overhead canopy as soon as 

 possible. 



Such are some of the cultural practices advocated by those 

 who have hitherto been followed in this country, and the 

 adoption of which has caused so much loss. More might be 

 added, such as the absence of working plans, unprofitable 

 methods of labour, methods of planting, the extent to which 

 pruning, due to over-thinning, was carried, and extravagance 

 in the general management of woods before the period of 

 agricultural depression set in, that has paralysed forestry 

 operations on many estates ; but these will be dealt with in 

 other chapters. 



But although the majority of writers on forestry have 

 apparently belonged to Brown's school, there were, previous to 

 Brown's time, observers who had other and more correct 

 notions of the subject of timber production, evidently, as now, 

 derived from Continental sources, although the cultural process 

 was not thoroughly understood. According to " Ree's 

 Cyclopaedia," 1819, Mr. Salmon, of Woburn, in Bedfordshire, 

 writing in the " Transactions of the Society of Arts " on raising 

 good timber, says, " it may be a fair question if our country 

 be not capable of producing fir timber little or not at all 

 inferior to foreign fir." Considering the purposes to which 

 such timber is commonly applied, " it must occur," he writes, 

 " that clearness of knots, straightness, length and equality of 

 size of -trunk, constitute its perfection, and that, if deficient 

 4 



