ON THINNING PLANTATIONS. 85 
gravelly clay, having been planted almost entirely with this 
tree. This part of the ground had a slope to the channel of 
a mountain stream, and it had a cover of heath from six to 
eight inches, The plants employed were— 
2000 larch, one-year seedling, one year trans- 
planted, ‘ : 
: : £0 10 0 
700 native Highland pine, two-year seedling, 
one year transplanted, . . ; ; 0 2 6 
Planting with the hand-iron, 0 3 0 
Plants and planting per acre, . £015 6 
The other parts of the ground were also planted four feet 
apart, with two-thirds of native Highland pine and one-third 
of larch; and each kind was varied in such a manner that 
the sort reckoned most suitable prevailed here and there 
throughout about 180 acres, which comprehended the whole 
plantation ; a narrow track was left in planting as a road, 
but being only nine or ten feet wide, it had been filled up 
with the lateral branches of the trees, and being of no use, 
was abandoned. I found the wood far too close, and although 
thinning to some extent had been practised throughout the 
whole, scarcely a well-proportioned tree was to be found ex- 
cept at the outsides, or where a thinning—in consequence of 
the failure of a few plants by some accident—admitted air. I 
expected to be able to record some remarkable specimens of 
larch, but I was disappointed to find it an almost impenetrable 
thicket of tall trees, displaying a grey mass of dead twiggy 
branches near the surface of the ground, surmounted by a 
green and waving foliage some thirty or forty feet overhead. 
There each acre contains from 1000 to 1200 trees, and the 
average value of each is about Is. or 1s. 3d. If the twenty 
acres were sold in one lot, it would readily fetch £50 per 
imperial acre. 
This plantation of larch has the appearance of having been 
only once thinned, and that about eight or ten years ago. 
I cannot say what revenue the thinnings yielded; but had 
