JANUAKY 19 



the plantation ; therefore the capital of £9000 originally 

 sunk will have increased in that time at 4 per cent, 

 compound interest to £13,322, 3s. 6d. In order to receive 

 4 per cent, upon this money, and to defray the annual 

 expense of £500, we must make a net profit of £1033 a 

 year off our 1000 acres. Between ten and fifteen years 

 thinnings will be worth little except for fencing purposes, 

 and cannot be reckoned on as doing more than covering 

 the expense of cutting and removal. From fifteen years 

 onwards the income will steadily increase, beginning with 

 pit-props, for which there is an almost insatiable demand 

 in this country, proceeding to the medium-sized trees 

 removed in judicious thinning, until the period of com- 

 mercial maturity, which in the case of Scots fir and larch 

 should be at about eighty years, when the regular falls 

 will begin. 



' I venture (says Mr. Nisbet) to say that an anticipation of 

 seventy-five cubic feet per acre is quite justifiable as an average 

 annual yield. Often much over a hundred cubic feet in actual 

 solid contents, and therefore still considerably in excess of 

 seventy-five cubic feet, even if all be reduced to correspond with 

 the customary British (square-of-quarter girth) measurement, 

 which makes an allowance of 21| per cent, for wastage in con- 

 version, is not an unusual yield for conifer crops on good soil.' 



It is not quite clear whether Mr. Nisbet claims that 

 the 'average annual yield' is to be held to include the 

 first ten unproductive years, or whether it is applicable 

 only to an established woodland in full working order. 

 But if the German returns, upon which he founds, mean 

 anything, they include such portions of an established 

 woodland as have been cleared in rotation, and are under 

 seedUngs or young planting. 



