6 



JOUENAL OF THE KOYx^L HORTICULTDRAL SOCIETY. 



seed of very good varieties there is always room for improvement by 

 selecting the best and heaviest seeds. 



But it is especially with reference to the seeds of forest trees that 

 the importance of selection is most urgent. 



When a seedling starts life with the richest store of nutriment 

 possible, it is surely better able to resist all sorts of diseases and 

 enemies. In the small series of experiments which I have mentioned, 

 it was quite obvious that the C plants were much more affected in 

 every case by injurious fungi or by slugs and insects than the B and A 

 plants. 



With tree seeds the danger of such attacks is a very serious matter. 

 I think I can best show this by shortly considering a question which 

 is at present much discussed in Scotch Forestry circles and which is of 

 serious urgency to all owners of woodlands. There is no doubt that 

 Scotland can produce magnificent larch. One finds splendid old trees 

 in almost every part of the country. But young plantations, and es- 

 pecially those of ages between ten and fifty years, are in many places so 

 badly attacked by the Peziza Willkommii that many proprietors have, 

 in despair, abandoned larch altogether and taken to planting spruce. 

 When one remembers that spruce timber may be worth 6d. to Id. a 

 cubic foot, whilst larch should be worth at least Is. 2d. to Is. Ad. a foot, 

 the serious loss involved by the failure of larch is obvious enough. 



The really important point is to know whether the evil state of so 

 many of our Scotch larch plantations is due to some inherent inferiority 

 in the seed or to something else, perhaps to unsuitable habitat or care- 

 less Sylviculture. Now one of the best Continental authorities. Professor 

 OiESLAR, states that the Peziza disease of larch may be due to any one 

 of the following agencies : deer breaking the branches or peeling the 

 trunk, damage through heavy snow breaking down the branches, injury 

 due to insect attacks in the nursery, want of sunshine, an unsuitable 

 position, such, e.g., as a damp hollow where the air is stagnant and 

 humid, ground which is too wet or waterlogged, or ground which is too 

 dry with a poor soil. 



According to his opinion, any one of these various causes may lead 

 to a dangerous epidemic of " blister " or Peziza. 



Now it is, I am afraid, indisputable that larch is very often planted 

 in quite unsuitable localities. 



I have myself seen a young larch plantation on a perfectly flat 

 peat moss with a subsoil of stiff clay. Of course these larches will die 

 in any case, but it so happened that it was not the Peziza but Hylobius 

 that was chiefly active in destroying them. 



But although in many other cases it is not difficult to see why larch 

 plantations have not succeeded, yet the fact remains that magnificent 

 larch has been grown in Scotland. 



Moreover, the seed from which all the oldest larches were grown 

 was, of course, Continental seed. Home-grown seed can hardly have 

 been used until about fifty or sixty years ago. 



So far as one can judge from the scanty records available, the use of 



