BRITISH FOREST TREES 01 



spruce has unfortunately less recuperative power than the 

 silver fir or even the Scots pine. 



Sylvicultural Treatment of Spruce. The economic value 

 of spruce is by no means small, if its cultivation takes place 

 under suitable circumstances. Moderate in its demands 

 on soil, which it also protects and improves in quality, and 

 seldom giving much trouble in the formation and reproduc- 

 tion of forests, spruce yields on favourable localities a 

 larger outturn of timber than any other tree usually grown 

 in pure-forests (vide table on page 44), without requiring 

 a high period of rotation to attain marketable proportions. 

 It remains long in close canopy, and forms lofty, cylindrical, 

 straight stems, that are valuable and of great general utility. 

 It also yields fair returns in the way of thinnings, and 

 occasionally affords good grazing for cattle. From the 

 actuarial point of view many advantages point towards the 

 cultivation of spruce as one of the most remunerative 

 orms of high forest ; but the relatively high returns 

 promised can only be realised on soils and situations which 

 admit of the normal development of this species, and these 

 are to be found chiefly in sheltered localities of mountainous 

 regions having a moist and moderately good soil. 



Misled by tempting actuarial calculations, it would be a 

 mistake to transform existing crops into spruce woods 

 without other definite reasons, for most other trees, and 

 particularly the broad-leaved deciduous species, have un- 

 doubted advantages over spruce in respect to the greater 

 security they afford against destruction of the crop from 

 snow, storms, or insects. But in mountainous tracts, on 

 undulating soil temporarily reduced by too open crops or 

 deciduous trees, or where timber prices are good, but fuel is 

 little in demand, spruce forests generally as a matter of fact 

 yield the most remunerative returns on soils of about the 

 average quality. 



