THE UTILISATION OF LAND UNSUITABLE FOR AGRICULTURE. 9 



elements are in much less proportion. Moreover, the leaves of 

 the trees in a forest are restored to the soil again, and the 

 deposit thus accumulated in the shape of humus is of the greatest 

 benefit to the trees, particularly on thin dry soils, which it pro- 

 tects and enriches from year to year. I have often seen instruc- 

 tive examples of this, and when listening to advocates of excessive 

 thinning of woods, on the plea that a thick crop impoverished the 

 soil, it seemed to me they, in the first place, over-estimated the 

 demands of a tree upon the soil, and, in the second, forgot that 

 it restored nearly as much as it took out of it. As will be shown 

 further on, shelter and warmth and a favourable exposure to the 

 light, while maintaining an unbroken leaf canopy, are of as 

 much, if not more, importance to the healthy development of 

 trees in a wood than the soil in which the roots grow. Given a 

 root-hold in a healthy soil, however poor, a tree will grow and 

 produce a timber trunk of surprising dimensions. Innumerable 

 examples widely apart could be furnished to prove this, a few of 

 which may be given. At Wharncliffe Chase, the scene of the 

 opening chapter of " Ivanhoe " and the reputed haunt of " The 

 Dragon of Wantley " of nursery lore, there still stand a number 

 of the " broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks " 

 referred to by Sir Walter Scott, and, considering the soil and 

 situation in which they grow, their bulk is surprising. Wharn- 

 cliffe Chase is described in the Doomsday Book as a natural 

 " waste," and in that condition it remains for the most part to 

 this day — the soil being so thin and scant, where there is any, and 

 rocks projecting so above the surface in all directions, as to make 

 it unfit for cultivation. Yet this poor tract, lying about 1,000 feet 

 above the sea-level, was to a large extent once covered by forest, 

 and, if it were not now tenanted by deer and rabbits, it would 

 produce timber again, as its young plantations abundantly testify. 

 The geological formation is the millstone grit lying above the 

 coal-measures, and, according to Prof. McConnell,* usually the 

 basis of one of the poorest and hungriest soils. Where the 

 bulky Oaks referred to grow the surface soil consists of a poor, 

 thin sod, lying on the rock, which forms a deep bed fissured in 

 all directions, and so permitting the roots to descend deeply into 

 it. One of the trees has apparently sprung from an acorn 

 dropped into one of these fissures on the edge of the crags on an 

 * McConnell's " Agricultural Note-Book." 



