PROFITABLE TIMBER TREES 103 



brought into this country. It must of course be grown on 

 poor land, which induces a slow and uniform growth, and 

 not on rich ground, which calls out the coarse nature of 

 the tree to the utmost. There are thousands of acres 

 within fifty miles of London, now lying more or less waste, 

 capable of growing the very best Scots pine timber ; and we 

 know of examples of self-sown crops on such land which 

 leave nothing to be desired as object-lessons of ideal forestry. 

 Yet it is no exaggeration to say that if such crops came 

 under the care of the average forester they would be at 

 once ruined by thinning, as the Crown authorities are 

 ruining their self-sown Scots fir wherever they happen to 

 possess any. 



The yield of timber that may be expected from Scots fir 

 on poor gravelly soils varies from 20 to 50 cubic feet per acre 

 per annum. A thick crop at eighty years of age ought to 

 contain at least two hundred trees to the acre, with an aver- 

 age contents of 20 feet per tree. Grown in the manner 

 described above, such a crop ought to be worth, at 6d. per 

 foot, £100 per acre. Scots fir being one of the easiest and 

 cheapest crops to plant, no great difficulty ought to be 

 experienced in obtaining a nett rental of 7 s. 6d. to 10 s. per 

 acre from land which is otherwise not worth more than Is. 

 for other purposes. Of course, land of this description varies 

 a good deal in quality, and it often happens that more or 

 less of it is practically useless from one reason or another, 

 and this brings down the average return on a large area. 

 But there is no good reason for supposing that the poorest 

 gravels in the south of England could not be made profitable 

 to their owners by means of this tree, and that timber will 

 eventually pay better than pit-wood in districts where less 

 than 6d. per foot can be obtained for the latter in the 

 wood. 



The Coksican Pine (Pirnis laricio). 



This tree has proved itself, on a variety of soils and 

 situations, one of the best producers of pine timber in this 

 country. It will thrive on sand, chalk, clay, or peat, but 

 the best timber is probably produced on soils similar to 



