Conifers 
In British Columbia these huge trees grow within a 
few feet of one another on a soil which is only a few 
inches deep, and generally only porous gravel of glacial 
origin. The climate is cool, with a long vegetation 
period and a rainfall of about 70 inches. There is much 
in what one hears of the forests in British Columbia 
which tends to make planters in Scotland exceedingly 
envious. 
The only one of these trees which has been tried in 
this country on a considerable scale is the Douglas fir, 
and this has been a great success. 
Larch has been hitherto the main stand-by of British 
forestry, but doubts are nowbeing expressed as to whether 
after all this is the best tree for our insular climate. 
Buhler and Kirchner consider that the larch requires 
plenty of sunshine.. In Europe it only grows naturally 
on arather narrow strip of country which runs from 
Dauphine (France) by the Vorarlberg and Salzburg Alps 
to the Highlands of Poland, where it bends south to- 
wards the Carpathians. Throughout this natural larch 
country there is at least 1750 hours of sunshine in the 
year. 
No part of Britain is so fortunate in its sunshine as 
to possess more than 1700 hours, and where larch is 
grown on a large scale, as in the Highlands and Western 
Scotland, there is probably only 1400 hours of sun, or 
far less than this amount. 
On the other hand, the climate of British Columbia 
seems to be very like that of the Highlands of Scotland 
and part of Wales and Cumberland. 
Still the well-known and valuable larch often does 
extremely well on sunny steep-sided slopes even in this 
country, and if this is so no one would suggest trying 
any other tree instead of it. 
It is now thought that the ravages of the larch disease 
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