104 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



LlME TREE. Tilia Europcea. The lime is well-known as 

 an ornamental tree that attains to a great height in parks and 

 avenues, but as a timber tree it is not much grown. London 

 and some of the larger towns are the best markets for this class 

 of timber, which is used in turning and for cutting-blocks, as 

 the wood does not blunt the knives. Nice butts fetch from 

 one shilling to one shilling and threepence per foot The tree 

 is liable to be broken and disfigured by gales when grown in 

 the open. 



SPANISH CHESTNUT. Castanea vesca. This would be one 

 of our most valuable forest trees but for its liability to ring- 

 shake after middle age, and which, as purchasers and foresters 

 know, renders any kind of tree almost worthless. In a ring- 

 shaken tree the annual rings shrink and part, and when the 

 tree is sawn up it falls to pieces. On this account consumers 

 do not care to buy Spanish chestnut standing, and felling 

 always reveals a large proportion of shaken trees. Ring-shake 

 may be worse in some localities and soils than in others, but 

 timber merchants who buy over wide districts say that it is 

 common everywhere in this tree. Up till forty or fifty years 

 of age the Spanish chestnut ranks in value with the oak, which 

 it much resembles in the outward appearance of its trunk, 

 but is a quicker grower. Although in a park or hedgerow it 

 has a very wide-spreading straggly habit, often throwing out 

 limbs of a distorted shape, it is an accommodating plantation 

 tree, producing a trunk of model shape and good bulk with 

 other species of the same rate of growth as itself like the 

 beech, for example, and the same conditions suit both. The 

 poplar, as stated elsewhere, overtops most other species, but 

 the Spanish chestnut beats most species in laying on timber, 

 and that, too, in very poor soils at high elevations. Where 

 it bears heavy crops of fruit regularly it may perhaps not grow 

 so fast, but in cold localities, where the fruit comes to nothing, 

 the growth is rapid. One fine park tree that we have had 

 under observation for many years is about ninety years of age 

 and contains over four hundred and forty cubic feet of timber, 

 which is at the average rate of close upon five solid cubic 

 feet per year for the ninety years. But as in all trees the 

 annual increment increases with age, the increase in this par- 

 ticular tree must have much exceeded five feet after middle- 

 age. The timber of the Spanish chestnut resembles the oak, 

 and when sound is valued at about the same price. It is a 

 good tree for producing a crop of small poles in a short time, 

 coppice wood and hop-poles, etc. 



