AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 229 
trees, hence the free enjoyment of light and air 
are essential requisites for its continuous thriving 
even when its main growth in height has been 
completed. Although pure plantations appear 
to thrive well, growing larch in this manner is 
not the way of producing the largest and the 
most valuable stems, while it certainly very much 
increases the danger from insects and canker. 
The best dimensions of larch and the finest 
quality of timber are produced in admixture with 
beech on limy soils. This, or planting here and 
there as a standard in copsewoods, or growing 
along with pines and spruces on the better classes 
of land placed under conifer crops, must be treat- 
ment better suited to the larch than growth in 
pure woods. Certainly a safe and fairly remun- 
erative crop of this sort would be a mixture of 
larch (23 to 3 feet high) and Corsican pine (about 
2 feet high) at 3 feet apart—or 34 to 4 feet— 
care being thus taken to secure some solid advan- 
tage for the more rapid growth of the larch in 
height, to avoid its being dominated by the pine. 
Grown along with oak and ash as standards 
over coppice larch should yield a very profitable 
return, while a little expenditure in pruning off 
