206 BRITISH WOODLAND 



neither a spruce nor a silver, but a Pseudotsuga. Luckily, 

 for everyday use, it bears the noble name of Douglas, in 

 memory of the intrepid collector who discovered it, and 

 sent home the first seeds from Vancouver Island about 

 eighty years ago. The value of the Douglas fir to 

 British planters may be estimated from almost the only 

 example of its treatment under proper forestry condi- 

 tions in this country. Even that example is on a very 

 limited scale, but affords indication of what may be 

 expected from this tree when we have been cured of our 

 mischievous practice of overthinning, and have learnt to 

 grow it in masses ; close enough to produce clean stems 

 without side branches, and extensive enough to enable the 

 trees to present an even front to the wind. In 1860 eight 

 acres of moderate land at Taymount were planted with 

 Douglas fir, four-year-old seedlings from two trees at 

 Scone Palace. The plants were set far too wide 12 feet 

 apart, or 308 to the acre, the spaces being filled with 

 larch, 908 to the acre so little did men understand forty 

 years ago the requirements of the Douglas fir. In twenty 

 years the Douglas had far outgrown the larch, which were 

 all thinned out and removed; and in 1887 the mistake 

 was made of taking out 620 Douglas firs, to allow the rest 

 to 'furnish,' leaving about 210 Douglas per acre. Now 

 ' furnishing ' is precisely what the Douglas fir ought not 

 to be allowed to do. These trees threw out strong side 

 branches, to the infinite deterioration of the quality of 

 their timber. Nevertheless, in 1900, exactly forty years 

 after planting, a Perth wood-merchant offered ninepence 

 a cubic foot for the standing crop ; the price current at 

 the time for mature larch and Scots fir being respectively 

 Is. and 6d. a cubic foot. Note that the period of maturity 



