60 Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society. 
doubt one of the most important uses for cluster-pine timber in the 
future will be for railway sleepers. It will be interesting therefore 
to consider what yield of cluster-pine sleepers might be expected 
from a plantation, say, on the Cape Flats, and also what would 
be the cost of such sleepers. As regards yield, there are no 
old regular plantations of cluster-pine on the Flats. Measurements 
have therefore been taken in the most regular cluster-pine planta- 
tions that could be found elsewhere. Two determinations have been 
made at Newlands and one at Plumstead. ‘The first Newlands 
sample area yielded an average acre-increment (firewood and timber 
combined) of 178 cubic feet. The second sample area has given 
an acre-increment of 170 cubic feet. Both sample areas were 
taken through woods of even density and fair growth, both were 
only eight years of age. Older trees would undoubtedly have given 
a higher acre-increment. From the Plumstead. trees an acre- 
increment as high as 300 cubic feet was obtained. The better 
portions of the Uitvlugt Reserve present a growth which is nearly 
or quite equal to that obtained from the sample areas at New- 
lands. However, making allowances for lesser growth generally 
on the Flats, and for a considerably lesser growth on certain of the 
shallow soils of the Flats, it seems fair to assume a general average 
increment of 100 cubic feet of wood per acre per year for cluster-pine 
plantations on the Flats. 
A simple calculation shows that if two-thirds the area of the 
Uitvlugt Reserve, or 5,524 acres, were planted with cluster-pine, 
there would be produced annually 138,400 sleepers, assuming with 
an annual acre-increment of 100 cubic feet, that five-eighths of the 
wood production would be timber fit for sleepers, and that a sleeper 
contains 24 cubic feet. This is considerably above the annual 
supply of sleepers now obtainable (but which will be less hereafter) 
from the Knysna forests. They could be supplied from Uitvlugt at - 
a fraction of the cost from Knysna, or of the imported sleeper, and 
would appreciably cheapen the cost of railway construction in this 
portion of the Colony. 
The working expenses of timber put on to the railway trucks at 
Worcester averaged during 1895 14d. per cubic foot. The cost of 
transport from the more distant parts of the Uitvlugt Reserve would 
average 3d. or 4d. per sleeper for the whole area. The plantation 
charges amount to £11 7s. 8d. per acre at the end of thirty-five 
years, 2.¢., 3,000 cubic feet are produced at a cost of £11 7s. 8d., 
equal to 078d. per cubic foot, and the cost of the wood in a sleeper 
is thus 0:°78d. by 2°46 cubic feet, equal to 1:92d., say twopence per 
sleeper. The manufactured cluster-pine sleeper put on the railway 
