BRITISH FOREST TREES 269 



The most natural treatment that can be accorded to elm 

 is its growth in admixture with beech or hornbeam on moist 

 patches with a warm aspect ; for without a considerable degree 

 of warmth its development is not energetic. Under such 

 circumstances it often attains a more rapid growth in height 

 than these species, but when intermixed with the spruce or 

 silver fir it is more easily overtaken in growth, and soon 

 outgrown and suppressed by them. Rank growth of grass 

 or weeds is very inimical to elm at the earliest stage of 

 growth ; yet when once it has passed through the bushy 

 period and commenced its upward growth, it shoots up 

 rapidly ahead of the beech, and maintains a vigorous growth 

 in height into the pole-forest stage of development, towards 

 the end of which, however, it is apt to be caught up by the 

 latter. After that, except on good soils, even assistance 

 given at the time of thinning out fails to prevent its being 

 suppressed, unless it has been grown in small knots or 

 patches, the centre of which cannot be reached by the 

 ruling species ; but on soils and situations more favourable 

 to its development, it either remains dominant, or can be 

 aided during the operations of thinning. On the better 

 classes of low-lying, and deep, moist, humose soil, to be still 

 found here and there under forest, mixed woods of oak, 

 ash, elm, &c., with the two first-named as ruling species, 

 are often formed, care being taken either to avoid close 

 planting, or better still to arrange the different species in 

 groups on the various patches of ground best suited to their 

 individual requirements, so that each species may at any 

 particular time receive the special treatment, as regards 

 thinning, underplanting, c., best adapted to its cultivation, 

 and to the production of the most remunerative assortments 

 of that kind of timber. This latter method is in many 

 respects the better, as, even with the use of strong and 

 large transplants of oak, the ash and elms are of speedier 



