PROFITABLE TIMBER TREES 91 



in its native habitat. The coarse material of which they are 

 composed allows air to circulate freely through, while more 

 or less constant percolation of water from higher to lower 

 levels prevents all acidity and the formation of compounds 

 due to stagnant water and air. There is little reason to 

 doubt the accuracy of this belief, but it does not necessarily 

 follow that the larch will thrive nowhere but in soils and 

 situations of this kind. We find first-class larch on perfectly 

 flat ground, and we also find it badly diseased on hillsides, 

 and abundant evidence exists to prove that the selection of 

 larch soils on arbitrary principles alone is a fatal mistake. 

 This becomes the more evident when the fact is recognised 

 that the conditions for ensuring success in the growth of any 

 tree are many and varied, and that one condition may balance 

 or counteract the effect of another. A wet climate may 

 counteract the effect of a dry soil, or a steep slope on which 

 the weather is always acting may do away with the usual 

 effect of a stiff and compact clay. Any particular soil or 

 situation must be judged on its merits, and not according to 

 any theoretical formula, which cannot fit in with all cases. 



In order to understand clearly the conditions upon which 

 the larch depends for its success, it may be worth while to 

 study a few of its peculiarities and characteristics, for it is 

 largely upon the demands made by these being satisfied that 

 its welfare depends. When a larch seed germinates it 

 behaves in the same way as any other tree seed, and sends 

 down a radicle or tap-root as far down into the soil the first 

 season as it can. But after the first season the growth of 

 the larch tap-root is no longer a prominent feature of the 

 growing root system. The lateral roots, which in the case 

 of most trees occupy a subordinate position until the fifth 

 or sixth year after germinating, grow out in the case of this 

 tree in a more or less horizontal position, and in a very 

 short time become the main support and means of nourish- 

 ment to the stem. Several conifers, such as the spruce, 

 Scots fir, etc., develop their lateral roots in the same way, so 

 far as their horizontal growth is concerned ; but the larch has 

 this peculiarity of its own, and that is the development of a 

 few lateral roots only to an enormous size and length, rather 

 than the growth of the usual network of roots of medium 



