160 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



In some parts of the Hartz Mountains, in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Brocken, at high elevations, where " snow breaks " 

 are to be feared and deer are troublesome, we have seen the 

 above quantities considerably exceeded. Taking the fore- 

 going figures, however, as they stand, a glance will show how 

 widely British and German practice differs. At the end of 

 twenty years there are as many or more trees to the acre than 

 British foresters usually plant at the beginning. The disparity 

 grows less as the trees grow older, but the disparity is greatest 

 at the crucial period between the first and fortieth year, when 

 the crowding is greatest in order to promote height-growth, 

 lateral growth being suppressed as much as possible by the 

 exclusion of light and air. Grigor, who was, and still is, 

 regarded by some as an even safer authority than Brown, in 

 hjs "Arboriculture," p. 91, plants three thousand trees or less to 

 the acre at the beginning, and removes "fully half the number 

 inserted per acre by the time that the most valuable portion 

 is twenty feet high," or say from ten to fifteen years old. At 

 thirty feet, about twenty years of age, his advice is that the 

 trees " should stand on an average fully seven feet asunder, 

 or about eight hundred per acre." Here we see the extra- 

 ordinary difference between German and British practices. 

 We have Grigor planting thin and thinning out fully half the 

 trees planted per acre, almost before they have met in the 

 rows, and at the end of twenty years or thereabout reducing 

 the number still further to just about one-fifth the number 

 given by Schlich for the same period in a climate certainly not 

 more favourable to .growth than the north of Scotland. 

 Grigor's practice does not appear to have been regulated on 

 any other principle than that of " rule of thumb," and cannot 

 be regarded as anything but wasteful. Taking almost any 

 species of forest tree, and considering the kind of exposed 

 and waste lands usually recommended to be planted, and 

 the rate of growth to be expected, on what rational principle 

 can the removal of fully half the crop almost before the trees 

 have met be defended ? Of course, the light and air theory 

 dominated Grigor as it did his contemporaries. At the age 

 of forty years, Grigor's number stands at three hundred to 

 three hundred and fifty, against Schlich's record of one thou- 

 sand and thirteen, and so on to the end. The attention of 



