im HARDY CONIFEROUS TREES. 



quality of soil on which it is produced ; indeed, the difference 

 between immature and nearly fully matured timber is trifling 

 when compared with the quality as affected by soil. One or 

 two instances may be cited as examples : In thinning a 

 plantation composed of Pseudotsuga Douglasii, Piniis Sirobus, 

 and Picca morinda^ fifty-three out of seventy-one specimens 

 of P. Strobiis were pumped or rotten at the core, and utterly 

 unfitted for use in any way. The trees were growing on 

 sandy loam, had been planted twenty-six years, and con- 

 tained, on an average, 25 feet of wood each. Now, having 

 felled trees of the same kind on various other qualities of 

 soil, and found the timber perfectly sound, deductions will 

 not be difficult to make. A still more curious example of 

 how coniferous timber is affected by the soil on which it was 

 grown was illustrated a few years ago on an estate on the 

 banks of Lough Neagh, in Ireland. A large number of 

 fencing poles, larch and Scotch fir, were being cut from two 

 neighbouring plantations of the same age and size, but grow- 

 ing on widely different soils peaty and gravelly. The 

 Scotch fir timber from the peaty soil was soft, spongy, and 

 nearly white in colour, while that from the gravel was hard, 

 firm, and of a bright yellow colour. So pronounced was the 

 difference in the quality of the two timbers that the woodmen, 

 in carrying the poles to the hard road adjoining the planta- 

 tion, had not the slightest difficulty in stating from which 

 wood the particular poles had been brought, that from the 

 gravelly soil having a sharp ring like metal when thrown 

 from the shoulder, whilst that grown on peat had a soft, dull 

 thud. Larch timber grown on gravelly soil is usually 

 pumped or rotten at the heart, and in a remarkable 

 instance with which I had to deal, every larch had to be 

 removed from a large mixed plantation of twenty-six years' 

 growth, growing on soil of this description. Such facts as 

 these are very significant, and show how careful we must be 

 in condemning any coniferous tree when judged from the 

 quality of the wood as produced on any particular class of 

 soil and that, with certain species at least, the observations 



