104 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



DEODAR. Cedrus deodara. — This tree has not been as 

 yet tested as a timber-tree in this country, but in its native 

 habitat it is known to produce timber of the best and most 

 enduring description, and examples of the wood that we have 

 seen in this country were harder and heavier than good 

 examples of larch grown under the same conditions. 

 Dr. Masters, in his " Notes on the Taxaceae and Conifera," 

 says,, the resemblance of the cedars to the larch is striking 

 botanically, a remark that applies to the habits of the two trees 

 also. The deodar, in a plantation, grows a little slower than the 

 Scotch fir and succeeds in a great variety of soils, provided 

 they are naturally or otherwise well drained, and it also prefers 

 an upland and open or even exposed situation. In warm 

 damp valleys it becomes sickly, but is extremely hardy in 

 situations that suit it. During the unusually severe winters of 

 i860 and 1894 it did not suffer in the slightest degree, where 

 the common English yew and holly suffered severely. Mag- 

 nificent examples are to be seen at Murthly Castle, in 

 Perthshire. It is well worth planting with the larch and 

 Scotch fir on dry soils, which suit all the three. 



Weli.ingtonia. Wellingtonia gigantia. — We have seen 

 numbers of this tree between thirty and forty-five years of age 

 felled, and in every case the wood was rather soft and white,, 

 with a very large proportion of sap-wood. The timber is,, 

 however, quite equal to that of the common spruce, and from 

 numbers of careful measurements and comparisons we have 

 made, it seems to produce measureable timber at about twice 

 as fast a rate as the larch, spruce, or Scotch hr. In cold, windy 

 situations isolated trees become branchless scare-crows, but in 

 a plantation it produces an ideal pit-prop pole in an extremely 

 short time, and does not lose its top like the Douglas fir. In 

 the quantity of timber produced per acre it would, we believe, 

 beat in a given time any other member of the conifera tribe 

 except the Douglas fir. It should be planted along with the 

 spruce, Scotch fir, and larch. 



