102 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



the consequence being that the main or rather remaining 

 crop grows into coarse timber with diminished height-growth. 

 Good Scots fir timber cannot be produced by either of 

 these methods. To grow timber of the quality imported 

 from Scandinavia it is absolutely necessary to keep the 

 proper development of the main crop steadily in view from 

 the first, and not allow it to be ruined for the sake of a 

 few shillings per acre from early thinnings or premature 

 fellings. Where the production of pit-wood alone is the 

 aim in view, it may, and probably does, pay to thin fairly 

 heavily after height-growth culminates, say at thirty or 

 forty years of age, because quality is of little or no im- 

 portance where the value of the wood is calculated by 

 weight. By thinning at this age a large yield of props 

 is obtained at the time, while the remaining trees increase 

 more rapidly in size from the increased supply of light and 

 air to their crowns. But where large tracts of Scots fir 

 land exist in districts more or less remote from colliery 

 districts, it seems a poor policy to have no higher aim in 

 view than the production of mining timber which commands 

 little better than firewood prices in the wood. For example, 

 there exists a well-known Crown forest in the south of 

 England which employs a staff of high-salaried officials to 

 grow pit-wood for collieries at least sixty or eighty miles 

 distant. Surely the Government of Great Britain is in a 

 position to set English landowners a better example of 

 economic forestry than this, and it would be a more dignified 

 proceeding to grow really first-class fir timber ; or, if this is 

 impossible in this country, as some maintain, demonstrate 

 that fact beyond all dispute. 



No timber tree is more easily managed in plantations 

 than Scots fir. The sole and only secret of growing it to 

 perfection consists in planting or sowing it thickly at the 

 outset, then leaving it entirely alone. No thinning should 

 be done whatever beyond the taking out of dead or dying 

 trees at periodic intervals, and this should be done as much 

 with a view to remove the breeding grounds of injurious 

 beetles as with any idea of ordinary thinning. Grown in this 

 way for seventy or eighty years, abundance of timber would 

 be produced fit to be compared with any foreign wood ever 



