82 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



hard and sterile. Wet soils of any description are not suited 

 for it, nor are cold and bleak situations or frosty hollows. 

 The best examples of Spanish chestnut are probably found 

 on the deep sands and gravels of the Greensand formation in 

 Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, where it is usually grown as 

 coppice ; but it may be taken as a fact that the particular 

 nature of the soil is not of great importance, provided its 

 physical condition is good and the climate warm and dry. 

 It may be regarded more as a local British timber tree for 

 extensive planting, and even then only as a so-called " nurse " 

 tree for other species, or for short rotations when grown as a 

 main crop tree. 



BLACK ITALIAN POPLAR (P. monolifera). 



The black Italian poplar is probably the fastest-growing 

 broad-leaved tree that can be grown in the British Islands. 

 It is a native of Canada, but was introduced into Italy at an 

 early date, and from thence into England. Unfortunately 

 its timber is not in great demand at the present time, and 

 the trade in it is rather a speciality, except for such uses as 

 packing-cases and so on, which are worked up at prices which 

 compel the maker to buy the raw material at next to nothing 

 in order to secure a profit. Still, on wet and swampy ground, 

 liable to floods and difficult to drain, black Italian poplar 

 and alder are about the only trees suitable for planting, and, 

 growing at a rapid rate, are fit to cut long before more 

 valuable but slower maturing species ; and as the cost of 

 planting or replanting such land is usually low, and its value 

 for other purposes practically nil, the financial results of such 

 crops are usually good if well managed. We know or have 

 heard of trees containing a hundred feet of timber at forty- 

 five years of age, which at only 6d. per foot represents a fair 

 annual rent for land worth less than 10s. per acre for 

 agricultural purposes. 



The black poplar, like most of its class, is not a 

 particularly long-lived tree, and requires to be cut at a 

 comparatively early age to be profitable. About fifty years 

 is long enough to allow it to stand, and, with a rapid 



