Picea 



1355 



These vary from 19 to 103 cubic feet, and average 63.7 cubic feet. I found stumps 

 of seven more trees on the area, and taking them at the same average there would 

 be about 1849 feet ; or about 193 trees measuring 12,326 cubic feet per acre. 



The age of the trees is about 100 years; the rings are well marked to eighty- 

 five years, afterwards so very close together that it is difficult to count them. All 

 the trees are going back very fast, I believe every one is decayed at the butt ; and 

 in the lower part of the plantation many are blown down or broken off each year. 

 We could only obtain 3d. to 4d. per foot for this class of timber, and it was in order 

 to turn it to a more profitable use, that I put down the creosoting plant." 



Assuming that this plantation had been clean felled at eighty years of age and 

 that it had then contained 10,000 cubic feet per acre, the annual increment would 

 have been 125 feet per acre; and taking the price at 4d. per foot standing the 

 value of the crop would have been ;^i66 per acre. 



The trees are facing north-east at an elevation of 600 to 900 ft., and the old red 

 sandstone here seems to suit all kinds of trees, both hardwoods and conifers, as well 

 as any soil in England. 



At Kyre Park there is a remarkable old spruce of the candelabra type which 

 has an immense rugged bole broken off at about 30 ft., and 15 ft. 9 in. in girth. 

 One of its upright branches is no less than 10 ft. 4 in. in girth, and twelve others 

 have naturally layered themselves in a circle 64 ft. in diameter, and grown up into 

 trees, two of which are 90 ft. high by 8 ft. in girth. 



Another remarkable instance of layering in the spruce is at Langley Park, 

 Slough, where a tree on the lawn has been broken off at about 20 ft. and whose 

 lower branches have formed a complete bower, resembling on a smaller scale that 

 formed by the Whittingehame yew. Some of the small branches, only one to three 

 inches thick, have formed a woody mass and thickened enormously at the point 

 where they have taken root. 



In Wales the finest spruce we have seen are in a wood above Gwydyr Castle, 

 where in 1905 I measured two trees in a grove round the bowling green, which 

 were about 125 ft. high by 9 ft. 8 in. and 6 ft. 10 in. in girth. In this grove, which is 

 shown in Plate 343, the spruce seems to clean itself better than in England, and I 

 estimated that there might be 8000 to 10,000 cubic ft. per acre. Mr. Richards, 

 forester to Lord Penrhyn, informed me that at Tyn-y-Coed in the same district of 

 North Wales, a spruce plantation was felled in 1902 and sold to Mr. J. Jones of 

 Liverpool, a tree in which is said to have been 149 ft. high, and that 158 trees in 

 this wood contained 11,937 cubic ft., an average of over 75 cubic ft. ; two of them 

 measuring respectively 80 ft. by 23 in. quarter-girth = 294 cubic ft., and 67 ft. by 

 27 in. = 338 cubic ft. It is evident from these figures that even if the value of the 

 timber is low as compared with imported spruce, yet that it may pay well in this 

 particular district, provided the trees are grown thickly enough. 



In Scotland the largest spruce of which we have any record grew at Blair 

 Atholl, and was visited by the Scottish Arboricultural Society in 1879. It was 

 then said to measure 142 ft. high, and to contain over 420 cubic ft. of timber.^ I 



1 Hunter, pyoods of Perthshire, 60 (1883). 



