98 FORESTS, WOODS, AND TREES 
being on the intake on the lower slopes between the valley 
and the fell, and in some places ascend up to 1500 feet 
elevation. The reclamation of the moorland to pasture 
would set free a larger area of intake for tree-planting. 
Both Prof. Fisher’s report, published in Manchester in 
1908, and an article by A. P. Grenfell in the Quarterly 
Journal of Forestry, iii. 21 (1909), may be consulted on 
this interesting and successful attempt at afforestation of a 
mountain watershed. 
The forester, Mr. A. W. B. Edwards, who wrote an 
article in Z'rans. Roy. Scot. Arbor. Soc. xxvi. 37-45 (1912), 
on the methods of planting adopted at high elevations on 
the Thirlmere area, recommends autumn planting as a rule, 
except for wet ground or peat, which should be planted in 
spring. He strongly advocates the use of small plants, 
preferably 2-year seedlings. In planting steep hillsides 
he uses the mattock (Fig. 15), commencing at the top of 
the intended plantation and working to the bottom (16). 
He uses larch mixed with beech as the main crop except in 
exposed sites; and plants a belt of pines, generally a mixture 
of Scots, Corsican, and Austrian pines, six or eight rows 
wide, all round the plantation, and also on any outstanding 
ridges and crags; and at the higher levels mixes the larch 
alternately with pines, passing gradually into pure larch as 
he descends to the 1000 feet contour. Though strongly in 
favour of Sitka spruce for high and exposed altitudes, he 
writes on 15th December 1918 that this species has only 
been used till now for filling vacancies. It has done well, 
some trees being about 15 feet high. Douglas fir, planted 
in the spring of 1908, now averages 30 feet in height, while 
Corsican pine, planted alongside at the same time, is about 
10 feet high. Abies grandis, reeommended by Prof. Fisher, 
was not tried, as plants of it were too dear. 
Longdendale Valley, the catchment area of the river 
Etherow and its tributaries in Cheshire and Derbyshire, is 
19,300 acres in extent, of which about one-third or 6400 
acres are owned by the Manchester Corporation. The area 
is situated in an elevated part of the Pennine range, and 
