166 THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH FORESTRY 



planting on peat, including draining and applying 

 artificial manure on soil, can be done for £5 per acre, 

 but the distances at which the trees are planted are very 

 wide, six or seven feet by five feet, and these distances would 

 scarcely give satisfactory results in Britain. Ordinary 

 planting on the Continent rarely exceeds from £2 to £3 

 per acre, the reason being the low cost of plants as 

 compared with the high price of transplanted trees in 

 Britain, and the lower cost of efficient labour. Fencing 

 and rabbit netting are seldom required, and work being 

 done on a large scale reduces the cost of all operations. 

 There is, therefore, no good precedent from continental 

 forestry practice in increasing the already heavy cost of 

 planting in Britain by the use of more than 4000 plants 

 per acre at the most. With expensive species even a 

 crop of more than 1000 trees per acre is rarely justifiable, 

 although such wide planting may lead to coarse timber, 

 unless careful pruning is carried out, or suitable nurses 

 used for filling up. Herein lies the great advantage of 

 using the species already named as nurses to broad-leaved 

 trees, or expensive conifers, provided care is taken that 

 they do not smother or unduly weaken the latter at a 

 later stage. 



The number of permanent species per acre, however, 

 is a point upon which too little attention has been paid 

 since mixed plantations became the fashion. The custom 

 followed by nurserymen and the older planters is that of 

 planting broad-leaved trees twelve feet apart, and in many 

 cases these did not consist of one species but of several. 

 Out of 2500 to 3000 plants per acre, therefore, the species 

 best suited for arriving at maturity on the particular 

 soil and situation may not have been represented by 

 more than 100 or 200 plants per acre, allowing for deaths, 

 accidents, damage by ground game, insects, and fungi. It 

 was impossible to guarantee, under such conditions, at the 



