94 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



adding that poor land will produce Scotch fir to perfection 

 that will produce nothing else. Batty Langley also (an 

 ancestor of one of the present Members for Sheffield), in his 

 quaintly written " Sure Method of Improving Estates," 1 728 

 had advanced ideas about the value of the Scotch fir planting 

 in England. He considered it the most likely fir for the pur- 

 pose, stating that, " in his time there were many Scotch firs 

 in Devonshire, planted by gentlemen then living, and fit to be 

 felled for the use of builders, adding that " he was in hopes 

 that our English gentlemen would speedily make large planta- 

 tions thereof, since they thrive with great celerity where few 

 of or any other kind of trees will grow." 



The consumption of foreign pine timber in the building 

 trades alone is enormous There is hardly a mansion, cottage, 

 or building of any kind in which the wood-work from the 

 floor to the roof does not consist almost wholly of pine timber, 

 nearly all foreign. Except in the case of large oak of fine 

 quality, and a small quantity of other kinds of timber, almost 

 the whole of our home-grown timber is used for rough pur- 

 poses, much of it going to the railways, collieries, waggon 

 builders, boat builders and the like. Of the nearly 18,000,000 

 worth of timber imported from abroad, over 14,000,000, 

 according to Government returns, represent pine timber, con- 

 sisting of Scotch fir, spruce, and, to a less extent, Weymouth 

 and pitch pine. The three first succeed well enough in this 

 country, but the Scotch fir is the most valuable of the three 

 and, the most extensively used. And the consumption of pine 

 timber is increasing at an almost incredible rate, especially 

 since the wood-pulp trade assumed such dimensions. This 

 consumption takes no account of the larch and fir timber of 

 home growth also consumed, which is large, only it does not 

 enter into competition with the foreign timber of the same kind 

 in the uses to which it is put. Here, then, we have three 

 species the Scotch fir, spruce, Weymouth pine, to which 

 should be added the larch, making four species which supply 

 by far the greater portion of the enormous quantity of timber 

 used in this country, which could be grown more quickly and 

 probably as successfully and profitably as any other species in 

 almost every part of the British Islands of a varying quality, 

 perhaps, but of good dimensions and of a quality sufficiently 

 good for a great multitude of purposes. The rotation period 

 that is, the period that the crops may most profitably occupy 

 the ground until the final clear cutting is a factor ,here. In 

 Germany the Scotch fir and spruce yields the earliest returns 



