12 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



as those required by field-crops, but quantitatively so much less 

 that almost any soil can furnish a sufficient quantity of mineral 

 substances for the production of trees, provided the leaf-mould 

 accumulating from the fallen leaves is not removed. And, 

 further, that Conifers require the least amount of such substances 

 of any known plants. 



II. — Situations most suitable for Planting, and kinds of 

 Trees to Plant. 



That there are vast tracts of poor land unsuitable for agricul- 

 ture but fit to grow timber in the three kingdoms has been 

 admitted, but the plea so often advanced, that we should plant 

 such tracts for profit in the expectation that the foreign supply 

 of timber will at no distant date fail, or fall short, is one I have 

 grave doubts about. Hitherto foreign countries have exercised 

 more foresight in the management of their forests than Britain 

 has done. We have great leeway to make up even to overtake 

 other countries, which are not likely to be more shortsighted in 

 the future than they have been in the past, and in planting 

 extensively in this country I think it would be much the safer 

 plan to indulge in no dreams of reduced competition, but to set 

 to work on a sufficient scale and on business-like principles, and 

 trust to the production of timber of a better quality by better 

 culture, and to getting far more of it to the acre, in order to hold 

 our own. I am sanguine that that much can be accomplished. 

 It is not altogether excessive foreign competition that hurts our 

 home timber trade. We have not always had the timber to 

 offer, otherwise the price, grown as it is grown on the Con- 

 tinent — that is, clean crops and heavy crops — would pay, and the 

 foreigner would not find it worth his while trying to get in. 



Neither do I, on the other hand, agree with the advocates of 

 planting remote, and practically inaccessible, solitudes in the 

 Highlands, or in Ireland, or anywhere else. Those who propose 

 to do such things with philanthropic objects, in the expectation 

 of creating new industries where none at present exist, deserve 

 credit, but I never read of such projects without thinking of Miss 

 Edgeworth's Irish landlord and his Scotch agent in her story 

 of " The Absentee." The landlord was always dreaming of 

 some great far-off scheme for his estate, and was as constantly 

 being lectured by his agent for neglecting the first principles of 



