THE NEW FORESTRY. 1 09 



per cubic foot, it is said ; but as that price probably included 

 the cost of delivery to the consumer, the net price might be 

 much less. We have seen the best plantations, and our idea 

 was that the timber was not worth the above figure in the 

 wood. We believe that by planting the tree from 4 to 

 5 feet apart, and letting it alone for fifteen or twenty years, 

 a crop of pit-props of excellent quality could be produced that 

 would pay the grower, and probably no other fir tree would 

 produce good deals so soon. Sections of trees about nineteen 

 years old, that we have seen, had a ^ diameter of eighteen 

 inches, indicating an extraordinary rate of growth. Sections 

 from trees ten years old, or more, showed heart-wood 

 colouring to within two-and-a-half to three inches from the 

 bark, the sap wood being white and the heart-wood of a fine 

 reddish shade, both taking on a finely polished surface. We 

 should say that this tree would produce a good useful deal at 

 an early age of a Duality between that of the spruce. and 

 Scotch fir. Such rapid formation of the heart-wood is remark- 

 able, and is certainly not found in any other fir that we know 

 of. In all the. plantations of this tree that we have seen the 

 trees have been rough and extremely tapering of bad shape 

 for commercial purposes, that is to say ; but reckoning from 

 such data as we have, there is little doubt but that in a plan- 

 tation sufficiently crowded to cause the trees to begin shedding 

 their lower branches early, trees squaring from ten to twelve 

 inches in the middle, cylindrical in shape, and clean, could be 

 produced in from thirty to forty years a rate of growth 

 exceeding that of all our other forest trees, and representing a 

 rate of production per acre far exceeding anything yet 

 recorded. The capabilities of the tree as a timber producer 

 have really not been tested yet, owing to the severe thinnings 

 it has been subjected to, but it is well worth experimenting 

 with under dense culture on a large scale.* The Douglas 

 fir flag-staff at Kew is one hundred and fifty-nine feet in 

 length, twenty-two inches in diameter at the base, and eight 

 inches at the top a run off in the taper of fourteen inches 

 only in fifty-three yards. This pole shows every sign of 

 having grown up in an excessively crowded forest where it 

 probably never had more than a few feet of branches at its 

 top. It is free from large knots for its whole length, and in 

 general shape and appearance it is so unlike British-grown 



* Since the above was written the author has secured photographs of 

 promising plantations of this fir. See plates 10 and ir. 



