SOIL AND SURFACE CONDITIONS 145 



With exposure to wind and increasing altitude the 

 necessity for good or productive soil invariably increases. 

 Experience has proved again and again that planting on 

 poor or peat-covered soil, in the face of the wind, will not 

 succeed with ordinary timber species, although hardy 

 trees like mountain pine, Avhite American spruce, or 

 others, may form some sort of shelter, and possibly pave 

 the way for better results later on. On private estates 

 failures on poor, exposed soils are numerous, but as they 

 cannot always be accounted for ou ordinary physical or 

 sylvicultural grounds, owing to the past history of the 

 plantation being unknown, it is not advisable to lay much 

 stress upon them. Every practical forester, however, can 

 judge the cause of failure for himself, and in most cases 

 bad soil is known to be the cause. 



Attempts by the State or public bodies in planting 

 exposed land are brought more prominently into view, 

 and several instances may be quoted to prove that the 

 waste lands of the British Isles cannot be afforested with 

 that simplicity and freedom from faikire which many 

 would have us believe. 



The most disastrous attempt at planting exposed land 

 was that at Knockboy in Connemara, where some 500 

 acres of wind-swept land, near the sea-level, were planted 

 under the supervision of the Congested Districts Board 

 for Ireland between 1892-1896. This land was a wet, 

 peat-covered tract of the typical Connemara type, and 

 was drained and fenced, and every possible tree tried both 

 by planting and sowing. The total cost amounted to 

 about £7 per acre for plants and planting, and the final 

 result up to date has been the production of a thin and 

 patchy crop of mountain pine, Scots pine, and a fcAv other 

 trees which have succeeded in getting level with the 

 heather after a period of over fifteen years. On occasional 

 spots where natural soil and sheltered valleys occur, a 



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