170 FORESTS, WOODS, AND TREES 



and be planted out at the end of the second or third season. 

 The timber is valuable when of small dimensions, as heart- 

 wood is formed very early ; and on this account the rotation 

 may be short, and the trees be felled when 30 or 40 years 

 old. The wood is very strong, and is valued for spokes of 

 motor wheels. It is easily riven, and when used for posts, 

 stakes, and sills, is much more durable than oak in contact 

 with the soil. It is now employed in the United States for 

 trenails used in fastening planks to sides of ships. Robinia 

 suckers freely from the root, and its natural regeneration by 

 this means is easy on sandy soil, when rabbits are excluded. 

 See Quarterly Journal of Forestry, ii. p. 301 (1908). 



NOTE 



On page 14.5 Thuya gigantea is said to be free from fungus attacks. 

 While these sheets were passing through the press, Dr. G. H. Pethybridge, 

 in Quarterly Journal of Forestry, xii. pp. 93-97 (April 1919), has described 

 a severe attack of the fungus, Keithia thujina, which recently killed outright 

 numerous three-year-old seedlings of Thuya gigantea in a forest nursery in 

 Queen's County, Ireland. 



Sir E. G. Loder has just written to me (June 1919) that a fine plantation 

 of 17,000 trees of this species at Leonardslee, Sussex, have been severely 

 affected by this fungus, trees even fifteen feet high being apparently doomed. 



