AFFORESTATION OF PIT MOUNDS 67 
of pit mounds by private owners. The Scremerston Old 
Colliery Mound was successfully planted in 1887, at the 
instance of Mr. John Davidson, agent of the Greenwich 
Hospital estate in Northumberland. This mound, which 
had long been a high and bare unsightly heap on the side of 
the Old North Road about three miles south of Berwick, is 
now a pleasing tree-clad hill) Mr. D. Smith, the forester 
who actually carried out the planting, tells me that three 
species were tried—larch, Scots pine, and birch. The birch 
trees did not thrive, and were early removed as thinnings. 
The Scots pine proved most successful, and are now fine 
trees, 30 to 40 feet in height. The growth has been best 
on the part of the mound which had been on fire. The 
success of this plantation, which is fully exposed to the west 
wind, is remarkable. The difficulty of establishing trees in 
the loose shingly refuse of this high and exposed mound was 
overcome by planting first a few rows of trees around the 
base of the mound, and in the shelter thus obtained, con- 
tinuing with a few more rows, and thus by successive 
bands in five or six years the whole mound was planted to 
the summit, which is nearly 100 feet high, without a single 
tree being blown out by the wind. 
Mr. George Bolam, who has written an article (4) on 
the planting of pit mounds in Northumberland, mentions 
that in later years, and closely adjoining Scremerston, Lady 
Frances Osborne has successfully clothed with young trees 
some bare pit heaps that had for more than a generation 
disfigured her property at Ord and Murton. 
The Charley pit bank near Mealsgate, Cumberland, about 
four acres in extent, has been successfully covered with 
trees. The colliery was abandoned in 1897, and the first 
step taken was the sowing of rape and grass seed on the 
mound. The roots of the herbage thus obtained have helped 
in the disintegration of the surface. Planting was begun in 
1898, the trees being planted in holes, in each of which 
one or two buckets of good soil had been put. Numerous 
species were tried, of which larch, Scots pine, and birch 
have shown the most vigorous growth, the earliest planted 
