UNDER A CEOP OF WOOD. 3 



years, under good management, pay the proprietor 

 nearly three times the sum of money that he would 

 have received from any other crop upon the same 

 piece of ground. 



This assertion, I am aware, will be considered 

 extravagant by many proprietors ; but to those 

 who may consider what I have here said as be- 

 yond the truth, I beg to say that although it may 

 be in reality beyond what they have themselves 

 experienced as to profits from their plantations, 

 yet I must say, that where good management has 

 been introduced, what I have said will be found a 

 practical truth ; and in order to illustrate the point, 

 I shall here give two examples, derived from my 

 own experience in the felhng of wood upon gentle- 

 men's estates, both in the highlands and lowlands 

 of Scotland. 



Upon the estate of Craigston, in Aberdeenshire, 

 where the plantations are, for the most, of larch, 

 Scots, and spruce fir, I have thinned them at all 

 stages, from that of sixteen years old up to that 

 of sixty, when they were cut down as ripe ; and, 

 having taken a valuation of the trees as taken from 

 an acre of plantation ground, at all the different 

 stages when thinning was required among the differ- 

 ent plantations between sixteen and sixty years, I 

 make the value of an acre of land, as found under 

 mixed fir-wood, in the district of country mentioned, 

 L.190. The annual rent of the land upon which 



