134 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



the produce of imported seed from the Tyrol and Germany 

 are found to be, to a large extent, of the white variety. 

 Observation has also shown that the red is the hardiest variety, 

 and it has been repeatedly found that the produce of the white 

 variety fail to ripen their tops in time to resist early frosts in 

 autumn. The Scotch-saved seed of the white variety also 

 produces plants of a less hardy constitution than is produced 

 by seed from the red variety." 



SECTION VI. SOWING PLANTATIONS. 



It is undoubtedly by far the best plan to raise plantations 

 from seed sown direct on the spot wherever the ground and 

 natural vegetation will permit that to be done. It is incom- 

 parably the quickest and the cheapest plan, and trees raised 

 from seed where they are to grow acquire a hold of the ground 

 that transplanted trees never do, and are hence much less liable 

 to be blown down. The conditions favourable to sowing are, 

 however, exceptional in this country, hence planting is resorted 

 to as a rule. No doubt all our old British forests were 

 naturally produced from seed, just as great tracts ; of forest 

 on the Continent of Europe are now, and no doubt, like the 

 latter, they were dense and unlike our " cultivated " woods and 

 plantations of the present day. Practically, little or no 

 natural regeneration goes on in our British woods because the 

 conditions are unfavourable, the underwood and rank under- 

 growth being too dense and thick to permit seedlings growing 

 up. It is a well-known fact, at anyrate, that in what /are 

 considered fairly well managed woods of broad-leaved and 

 conifera species, mixed or pure, that seed freely, the natural 

 seedlings are very scantily produced, hence the common 

 practice of replanting thin old woods with transplants from the 

 nursery. The seeds of a number of species are shed abun- 

 dantly, and vegetate, but the young plants perish in the 

 struggle with the coarse natural herbage and weeds during 

 the first and second years of their existence, or, if they 'do get 

 up, it is only in scattered patches where the surface is favour- 

 able. The common bracken is one of the worst enemies of 

 young forest trees and everything else, as wherever it abounds 

 in unbroken tracts it kills even the grasses. We know of 

 extensive woods where the bracken has done this, and where 

 even sturdy transplanted forest trees, eighteen inches to two 

 feet high, are smothered and killed by it unless it is beaten 



