METHODS AND PRACTICE 167 



end of fifty or sixty years a pure crop of more than two 

 or three dozen well- developed trees per acre, the remainder 

 consisting of sickly trees, nurses and other species, which 

 might have no particular value in the first place, and 

 could not give a satisfactory account of themselves in the 

 second. 



The above is one, if not the chief, cause of the bad 

 material and financial yields from British, and especially 

 English woods, apart from excessive thinning and other 

 malpractices of a more or less deliberate nature. It 

 can only be avoided by planting three or four times 

 the number of the main crop species, or at least 700 to 

 1000 to the acre. This would represent about one-fourth 

 of the entire crop planted, so that a pure wood may be 

 found on the ground by the fiftieth or sixtieth year, 

 according to the rate or degree of thinning followed. 



In addition to the actual number of permanent species 

 planted, again, special attention should be directed to 

 their quality and early development. A custom has 

 prevailed too long of the indiscriminate use of plants 

 indifferently raised or treated in the nursery lines. 

 There is almost as much difference between individuals 

 of the same species, so far as rate of growth and general 

 development are concerned, as between two individuals 

 of different species. From the seed bed to the plantation, 

 and during the first five years after planting, a process 

 of selection should be carried out amongst the main 

 crop species until the majority of these at any rate give 

 every promise of satisfactory development at the tenth 

 year or so of their existence. Ash, beech, sycamore, 

 Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, poplar, etc., can all be safely 

 transplanted at three to six feet in height, provided they 

 have been properly treated in the nursery. To plant a 

 large number of trees at this size is expensive, but 200 to 

 300 can at any rate be put in per acre during the first 



