118 APPENDIX. 



per acre. Each tree will contain at least 50 cubic feet, or one load of 

 timber, which, at the low price of Is. per cubic foot, only one half its 

 present value, will give c£1000 per acre, or, in all, a sum of =£'6,500,000 

 sterling. Besides this there will have been a return of c£'7 per acre 

 from the thinnings after deducting all expense of thinning, and the orig- 

 inal outlay of planting. Further still, the land on which the larch is 

 planted is not worth above 9d. to Is. per acre rent. After the thin- 

 nings of the first thirty years, the larch will make it worth at least 10*. 

 per acre, by the improvement of the pasturage, upon which cattle can 

 be kept summer and winter. (Highland Soc. Trans., Vol. 3, p. 168. 



Soil for tlic Larcn. It is an error to suppose that the larch will 

 thrive in all soils and situations. There are many soils in which it will 

 not thrive and ought not to be planted. In soils which have been 

 turned up by the plough, and which have borne white crops, the larch 

 cankers; in wet situations also. In soils resting on a wet tilly subsoil, 

 it decays at the heart, after arriving at forty years of age. In situations 

 where water stands for a length of time about the roots, it becomes 

 fogged or covered with lichens. But in all rocky situations and par- 

 ticularly those which are composed of mica slate, containing crystals 

 of garnets, among the fissures and fragments of which the trees can 

 push down their roots, larches thrive to admiration. 



The growth of the Larch. Taking the .iverage height of an average 

 larch, of eight years from the seed, at eleven feet, it will be nearly ac- 

 curate to allow sixteen inches as the annual growth, till the tree is fifty 

 years old, and after that, only ten inches per annum for twenty-two years 

 longer, as the length of the tree lessens in growth as the bulk of the 

 wood increases. These data give a larch tree of seventy-two years of 

 age a height of ninety-three feet four inches; a fair average, agreeing 

 with actual experiment. 



In regard to the growth of the girth, a larch tree, on an average, 

 will acquire an inch in girth per annum, till it be twenty-four years 

 old ; and from that time till it has acquired the venerable age of sev- 

 enty-two years, it will grow one inch and a quarter in girth every year; 

 thus : — 



In 24 years, it will be 2 feet in girth, at 1 inch per annum. 

 48 years more, 5 feet in girth, at 1 1-4 inch per annum. 



In 72 years, it will be 7 feet. 



