120 APPENDIX. 



400 trees at 43 1-2 years old, at 15 cubic feet each tree = 6000 

 cubic feet, or 120 loads, at Is. 6d. per foot profit =^ of 4.50 per acre. 



400 trees at 59 years old, at 40 cubic feet each tree = 16,000 

 cubic feet, or 320 loads, at 2s. 6d. per foot profit = =£2000 per acre. 



400 trees at 72 years old, at 60 cubic feet each tree = 24,000 

 cubic feet, or 480 loads, at 2s. 6d. per foot profit =: ^^3000 per acre. 



The average of these prices would be ^1381 5s. per acre, so that 

 ^1000 per acre is not too high a calculation of the value of the Duke's 

 larch plantations." These estimates are made upon foreign prices of 

 timber ; tlie profits among us of a plantation upon an humble scale 

 would bear a fair proportion, as the product is always sure to command 

 a market. 



" Posts and rails for fencing may be made either out of the tops or the 

 trunks of the young trees. While fir posts and rails last only about five 

 years and are worm-eaten after that period, the larch posts stand for 

 twenty years and never get worm-eaten. 



The Riga timber and American white pine are about one fifth part 

 less strong than the larch. 



The relative duration of timber has been thus determined by M. 

 Hartig, an eminent German professor of forestry. Small posts of lime 

 tree, black American birch, alder, and trembling poplar, inserted in the 

 soil, decayed in three years; the common willow, the horse chestnut 

 and the platanus in four years; the purple beech and the common birch 

 in five years; the elm, the hornbeam, the ash, and the Lombardy poplar 

 in seven years; the acacia, the oak, the Scotch pine, the Weymouth 

 pine and the spruce fir, at the end of seven years were only decayed a 

 little to the depth of a quarter of an inch ; the larch, the common juni- 

 per, the Virginia juniper, and the arbor vitse were, at the end of the 

 same period, untouched by decay. Thin boards of the same woods de- 

 cayed in the following order : platanus, horse chestnut, lime tree, pop- 

 lar, birch, purple beech, hornbeam, alder, ash, the maple, the spruce 

 fir, the Scotch pine, the elm, the Weymouth pine, the acacia, the oak, 

 and the larch. (L'Agronome, tom. i. p. 315.) It thus appears, that 

 the larch, whether as posts with the bark on, or sawn up into boards, 

 is by far the most durable of our timber trees." 



