202 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
First of all, of the enormous quantities of timber 
now being annually imported into Britain for 
constructive purposes more than nine-tenths are 
coniferous, nor are the demands likely to change 
in this respect, and the whole of these imports 
could be easily and profitably grown as crops of 
timber on poor land now lying disused or heather- 
grown, and all but unproductive save for shooting 
purposes. Secondly, in comparison with broad- 
leaved trees, the conifers make but small demand 
on fertility of the soil, while even among conifers 
the pines, and particularly Scots and Corsican 
pines, form fairly good woodland crops, where it 
would be hard to form plantations of other, more 
exacting kinds of trees. Hence a conifer crop of 
some sort, and sometimes, as on poor dry soils, 
specifically a crop of pine, is the only practical 
stepping-stone by which denuded and deteriorated 
hillsides or moors can be improved, by fall of 
the needles, so as later on to become suitable, if 
desired, for bearing a more exacting crop of 
broad-leaved trees when the conifers become 
mature and are marketable to the best advantage. 
And, finally, on the poorer classes of soil coni- 
ferous crops of timber, judiciously formed and 
