THE NEW FORESTRY. IO3 



of mature age in this country have been very tine. Mixed 

 with the beech it holds its own in height-growth, but the beech 

 is of poor quality owing to its liability to branch under the thin 

 shade of the larch. The larch succeeds in a great variety of 

 soils, on lowlands and on hills, where they are well drained, 

 and grows rapidly. The leading shoot in young trees fre- 

 quently exceeds three feet in a year, and we have known 

 plantations on gravelly lands in Leicestershire where, the 

 annual growth on many of the trees exceeded four feet. We 

 strongly recommend the larch still to be planted in mixed 

 woods of hard-woods, where it holds its own well, and should 

 it become diseased it may be removed without serious loss of 

 crop. There are few larch plantations now in which the dis- 

 ease is not more or less prevalent, and on some estates where 

 the original plantations of larch are still sound, and all the 

 conditions are favourable, the young plantations have been 

 ruined by the disease. The wood of the larch is used for a great 

 variety of purposes where strength and endurance are required, 

 but it is not so well known that it also makes excellent furni- 

 ture and may be both carved and polished, when it is equal 

 in appearance to pitch pine. We have seen articles of this 

 description that have lasted without warping or shrinking for 

 nearly forty years, but for such purposes the wood of course 

 requires to be seasoned. 



JAPANESE LARCH. Larix leptolepis. — This larch, which 

 covers mountain tracts in Japan, has hitherto been described 

 as a small tree between thirty and forty feet high and next to 

 worthless as a timber 7 tree. It has, however, been described to 

 us, by those who have seen forests of the tree, as growing to a 

 height of sixty or seventy feet, and some examples planted about 

 fourteen years ago at Blair Drummond are now between twenty- 

 five and thirty feet in height, perfectly healthy, and showing 

 no signs of disease though growing near diseased plantations 

 of the common larch. The rate of growth of these trees, and 

 of numbers of younger trees growing at Wortley and elsewhere, 

 indicate a tall tree of good bulk, ultimately, as the rate of 

 growth in youth, of all the conifera, is always in proportion 

 to the ultimate height of the species. In most respects the 

 Japanese larch strongly resembles the European species, ' is 

 quite as hardy, and a more beautiful tree. We drew attention 

 to it in the " Field " and elsewhere some years ago, and since 

 then considerable quantities of it have been distributed by 

 Messrs. Dickson and Co., Edinburgh, who have raised 

 ■considerable batches of it in their nurseries. 



