BRITISH FOREST TREES 103 



it forms pure forest. As a rule large transplants should be 

 used in introducing the larch into spruce woods, so as 10 assist 

 in giving it the greatest possible advantage in growth, but 

 unfortunately where roe-deer are maintained, these are 

 specially sought out by the bucks at the time of brushing the 

 velvet from the horns in early summer, and much damage 

 may be caused in this way. 



Scots pine is seldom to be found as a minor species on 

 the better classes of spruce soil, where the preference is 

 usually given to those others already mentioned ; but it forms 

 a valuable associate on the poorer qualities of soil, and 

 wherever the satisfactory development of the spruce is likely 

 to prove questionable. The role that it then plays is partly 

 that of a purely subordinate species, partly that of a nurse or 

 protector. In such cases the object in view is to raise the 

 spruce in as large a quantity as possible, but at the same 

 time to have the pine represented to as great an extent as 

 can be grown along with the spruce, or as is necessary for 

 the maintenance of closed forest. That, under such 

 circumstances, what was originally intended as a spruce 

 forest with the admixture of Scots pine, ultimately approaches 

 maturity as a crop of pine with admixture of spruce, can 

 easily be understood, as on such debatable land considera- 

 tion must be duly given to the factors influencing the growth 

 of both species at many critical periods of the life-history of 

 the growing-stock. Any stencil-like regularity and uniformity 

 of treatment of such mixed crops is out of the question, and 

 it can only be expected that, with proi>er and prudent treat- 

 ment, the mature fall will consist here and there of spruce 

 with pine, and in other parts of pine with spruce intermixed. 

 When there is doubt about the soil suiting the spruce, it is 

 perhaps a good rule always to form the young crop by means 

 of an equal admixture of both species in rows or bands 

 proceeding later on with the clearings and thinnings as may 



