THE NEW FORESTRY. 93 



because although we know what quantity is imported into this 

 country from abroad annually, there is no record of the quan- 

 tity of home-grown timber disposed of from estates wherever 

 there are plantations ; but that the quantity is large there can 

 be no doubt, and when added to the nearly 18,000,000 worth 

 annually imported, shows what scope there is for the British 

 planter. The home-grown timber generally offered for sale 

 is oak, ash, beech, sycamore, elm, birch, rough Scotch fir, 

 spruce and larch, but this list only represents the kinds we 

 have most of, and does not indicate the kinds of timber in most 

 demand. In fact, the question of demand has never been 

 sufficiently considered in this country. The demand for 

 Scotch fir for railway sleepers would of itself absorb a very 

 large portion of all that could be grown in this country, north 

 or south, the creosoting process having made consumers less 

 fastidious as to quality. Many of the sleepers ,laid down now 

 represent the full diameter of the tree, squared, including the 

 sap wood or a portion of it. There are nearly twenty thou- 

 sand miles of railways in the British Islands, or about forty 

 thousand miles of single lines furnished with sleepers laid from 

 two feet six inches to two feet nine inches apart, each sleeper 

 being nine feet long, ten inches wide, and five inches thick. 

 These are being constantly replaced, and, for reasons known 

 to engineers, wooden sleepers are not likely to be replaced 

 by steel except in tropical countries. The number of telegraph 

 and telephone poles, of considerably less girth than sleepers, 

 amounts to some seven millions or more Scotch fir also and 

 will increase. Scaffold poles and pit-props are generally of 

 spruce, and the demand is enormous. 



Hitherto we have been accustomed to associate the Scotch 

 fir chiefly with the Highlands, but the extent to which it has 

 already established itself in the south of England and else- 

 where and spread naturally, and the opportunities which poor 

 lands afford for planting fir tree forests, seem to indicate that 

 England may yet become the chief fir region of Great Britain. 



With examples of Scotch fir from the north we are all 

 familiar, but of its value as grown in the south we have heard 

 but little, although the question has presented itself to the 

 minds of planters at different times. Rees, quoting from the 

 "Transactions of the Society of Arts," 1819, states that the 

 steward to the Marquis of Bath had proved conclusively on 

 poor lands he had to deal with that neither oak nor beech was 

 as valuable at sixty years of age, on the best spots of land, as 

 Scotch fir would be on the very worst land at thirty years, 



