METHODS AND PRACTICE 165 



growth likely to affect the trees in any way. But the 

 custom of leaving crops of this kind alone for twenty to 

 thirty years to tight out the struggle for supremacy is 

 responsible for the great length of time they require 

 to produce good timber. It is not uncommon to find 

 beech, silver fir, spruce, etc., which have not increased 

 more than four or five inches in diameter at thirty 

 years of age, and the majority so greatly weakened 

 in the struggle that the total number of vigorous trees 

 left by the fiftieth year is less than would be found in a 

 crop planted and thinned in the British fashion. This 

 dense crowding during the early stages is not economical, 

 although it may lead to the production of the finest 

 timber in a few individual trees in the long run. As a 

 matter of fact, German foresters are beginning to adopt 

 the system of heavier and earlier thinning than was the 

 practice twenty or thirty years back. 



In planting four-year-old plants, the same or even wider 

 distances are often adopted on the Continent than the 

 three to four feet usual in Britain. Spruce in Belgium, 

 for instance, is planted at six or more feet apart, a 

 distance at which no British forester would plant on 

 ordinary ground. Muller,^ in reviewing the report oi 

 the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion, commented 

 on the suggested planting of 8000 to 4000 plants per 

 acre as a greater number than is customary in Germany. 

 The cases in which thick planting is carried out are 

 chiefly those where two-year seedlings are planted, or 

 where bunch-planting is adopted. Even with a stock of 

 10,000 or more plants per acre, however, the expense 

 rarel}^ exceeds £5 per acre, allowing for preparation of 

 the soil by ploughing. On the Jutland heaths surface 

 and subsoil ploughing, harrowing, and planting spruce and 

 pine at the rate of 4000 to the acre amount to £4, and 

 ordinary pit-planting costs rather less. In Belgium 



^ Zeitschrift fiir Forst- und Jagdwesen. April 1909. 



