THE UTILISATION OF LAND UNSUITABLE FOR AGRICULTURE. H 



is "a barren gravel." So at Bournemouth, again, there are 

 extensive and thriving tracts of Scotch and other Firs grow- 

 ing, for the most part, on pure sand-banks. Along the flat 

 shores of North Wales and Lancashire, and elsewhere, there 

 are similar extensive reaches of sand-dunes (of the same de- 

 scription as those at Bournemouth), which threaten eventually 

 to submerge the railway in some places, which, if planted, 

 would undoubtedly produce good Fir timber. At present such 

 sand-hill tracts are amongst the most worthless of lands for 

 agricultural purposes, but would not be difficult to plant. In the 

 Highlands of Scotland, again, in many parts, the size of the 

 Larch and Scotch Fir trees, growing in very poor soils, has often 

 excited the surprise of travellers, for in many places the soil con- 

 sists of poor peat or gravel only. In the part of Yorkshire 

 where I live I daresay travellers have often noticed consider- 

 able tracts near collieries covered by deep mounds locally called 

 "pit-hills." These hills, which consist wholly of a poor blue 

 shale brought out of the coal-pits in getting the coal, do not 

 contain a particle of what one would call " soil," and would 

 probably be regarded as the worst rooting medium that could 

 be found. Yet it grows timber-trees. About thirty years ago 

 some of these pit-hills on the Wortley estate w T ere planted with 

 a general mixture of forest-trees, which now form a dense and 

 thriving plantation. In short, the indifference of forest-trees to 

 their rooting medium, so long as the moisture is sufficient, is 

 surprising, and I lay stress on the point to show that, however 

 unfit for farming purposes, and however poor land may be, it 

 will almost certainly grow good timber. 



I do not know of any theory that is better sustained by 

 facts than that timber-trees can be grown to good size on soils 

 chemically poor from an agricultural point of view, because 

 they need a much smaller quantity of the usual plant-food 

 derived from the soil than farm and garden crops do. When I 

 first studied analysts' tables on this subject, I confess it was a 

 kind of revelation to me, for it explained much that had before 

 puzzled me — viz. why great trees should grow out of soils in 

 which, according to our gardening and farming ideas of plant 

 culture, they ought to starve. Schlich's conclusions on this 

 subject, from Ebermayer's tables, briefly summarised, are that 

 the substances required by forest-trees are qualitatively the same 



