ISO 



THE NEW FORESTRY. 



ii., p. 209, speaking of the Black Forest, gives the number of 

 trees, consisting of a mixture of Scotch fir, spruce, and beech, 

 per acre, at different ages, as follows : — 



Number of trees to acre. 

 3960 



Age of wood in years. 

 20 ... 



40 



60 



80 



IOO 



IOI3 



449 

 346 

 262 



We believe these figures to fairly represent the degree of 

 density in German woods generally, and if the reader will refer 

 to the plates taken from photographs in different parts of 

 Germany, for this work, he may form some idea how such 

 dense forests look compared to plantations in this country. 



In some parts of the Hartz Mountains, in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Brocken, at high elevations, where " snow breaks " 

 are to be feared and deer are troublesome, we have seen the 

 above quantities considerably exceeded. Taking the foregoing 

 figures, however, as they stand, a glance will show how widely 

 British and German practice differs. At the end of twenty 

 years there are as many or more trees to the acre than British 

 foresters usually plant at the beginning. The disparity grows 

 less as the trees grow older, but the disparity is greatest at the 

 crucial period between the first and fortieth year, when the 

 crowding is greatest in order to promote height-growth, lateral 

 growth being suppressed as much as possible by the exclusion 

 of light and air. Grigor, who was, and still is, regarded by 

 some as an even safer authority than Brown, in his "Arbori- 

 culture," p. 91, plants three thousand trees or less to the acre 

 at the beginning, and removes " fully half the number inserted 

 per acre by the time that the most valuable portion is twenty 

 feet high," or say from ten to fifteen years old. At thirty feet, 

 about twenty years of age, his advice is that the trees " should 

 stand on an average fully seven feet asunder, or about eight 

 hundred per acre." Here we see the extraordinary difference 

 between German and British practices. We have Grigor 

 planting thin and thinning out fully half the trees planted per 

 acre, almost before they have met in the rows, and at 

 the end of twenty years or thereabout reducing the number 

 still further to just about one-fifth the number given by 

 Schlich for the same period in a climate certainly not 

 more favourable to growth than the north of Scotland. Grigor's 

 practice does not appear to have been regulated on any other 



