462 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
termed, in other words a young crop growing out of the stumps of the 
trees recently cut down. This territory was leased for ninety-nine years by 
a company of Liverpool gentlemen and dealt with as follows :— 
It was subdivided into about twenty sections and one was cut down 
every year in spring and summer, when the sap was up, and barked chiefly 
by women and children ; the bark being taken to Liverpool and the timber 
converted into charcoal for smelting iron ore—which was brought from 
Ulverston to Bunawe by the company’s schooners—there converted into 
charcoal bar-iron and taken back to Liverpool as ballast, the vessels being 
filled up with the bark and wool of the district. 
The iron produced at this small furnaee brought the highest price in the 
British market, being sold for from £10 to £15 per ton, and was utilized for 
what is known as cold-drawn wire. 
Each subdivision when eut was protected by rough fencing to prevent 
eattle from eating the young shoots and the finest oak tree in the division 
was left as a standard at each periodical cutting. The result of this 
forestry management was that three or four successive generations made 
fortunes, and the forests, when I left Scotland in 1860, were at least as 
flourishing as at the beginning of the lease. The lessees never planted a 
tree, but merely conserved and utilized what they found on the ground. 
The forests here are not deciduous, and, when cut down, the stumps 
gradually die out; at the same time they reproduce themselves from the 
fallen berries, but are very slow of growth. 
I eounted 500 rings on the planed stump of a black-pine tree in Bea- 
ward Bush, the diameter of which was only about three feet, whereas a 
healthy larch would exceed that in about a tenth of the time, and the timber 
be of more value for every purpose, from the construction of a wheel-barrow 
to that of a ship. 
Larch is also very durable in or out of the water. Piles of only thirty 
years' growth were used in extending one of the Oban jetties in Argyleshire, 
and after being twenty-five years in use were as sound as when driven, and 
not touched by a Teredo. 
Larch and fir are used for coal-pit props and railway-sleepers throughout 
Great Britain. 
In the course of a few years all the railway-sleepers in New Zealand 
will have to be replaced, which will pretty well exhaust the available 
timber suitable for the purpose, hence the desirability of planting trees of 
quicker growth than the native ones. It is said that larch and fir will no 
thrive here, as they happened to fail with some run-holders in Otago. It 
would be surprising if they did thrive, under the circumstances; having 
been taken from a cosy nursery and planted into holes of solid clay, where 
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