THE LARCH 
45 
and St Nicolas, upon the Simplon, and in \ 
the Binnenthal. These valleys are for j 
the most part closed by narrow and 
damp gorges which are thickly grown 
with Pine woods ; but on mounting 
to where their sides open out to the 
air and sunlight", the upper slopes are 
clothed with forests of pure Larch. 
Scattered in decreasing numbers in the 
Alps Vaudoises, the tree reaches its 
western limit in Dauphiny, where it 
is scarce and of poor quality. Around 
Berne also it becomes scanty, and dis- 
appears completely from central Swit- 
zerland, in the cantons of Claris and 
Unterwald. The drier slopes of the 
Carpathians suit it well but, fearing 
the heat of the Mediterranean region, 
it is absent through the whole of south- 
ern Europe from Caucasus to the 
Pyrenees, though by a strange error, 
Nyman reports it as growing in the 
Pyrenees and in parts of Catalonia. 
From the Carpathians, eastward it dis- 
appears completely in the plains of 
Russia, only to reappear on the far 
side of the Ural Mountains in the form 
sibirica^ which differs from that of Eu- 
rope only in its more upright and taper- 
ing trunk, and the more rounded and 
convex scales of its cones. Northward 
it reaches its arctic limit in Bogenida — 
latitude 7 1° — where, as a stunted shrub 
it creeps nearer the pole than any other 
tree. 
A long winter's rest of four or five 
months is best for the Larch, and it 
must have space and light, hence very 
close planting is not good, and we 
should plant it more and more in mixed 
woods rather than in solid masses. In 
Increase. 
forests, the Larch is always wide apart, 
and the soil covered with a rich sward, 
which is regularly pastured or mown. 
The tree gives seed so freely 
in its native region, and is 
increased to such an extent in all the 
finest nurseries of Europe worthy of 
the name, that there is not often need 
to propagate it in a home nursery, 
unless it be upon the largest estates and 
on soil fitted for seed-raising, which 
many soils are not. One of the evils of 
the home nursery that we usually see, 
is that everything in it is kept till too 
old for the best planting; whereas, the 
smaller the Larch is when planted, the 
better the result ; little plants are natur- 
ally cheaper than large ones, though 
the large ones are not worth having as 
a gift. As regards the space allowed 
to each tree, I think 4 feet both ways 
is the best, whether the trees are planted 
for their own sake or as nurses to other 
trees. As nurses they might even be 
planted a little closer, but, generally, 
4 feet is the right distance apart. The 
Larch fruits early, but the seed is often 
sterile until middle age when it becomes 
regularly fertile. The cones open some- 
times in the autumn but more often not 
until the following spring, remaining on 
the trees for years after shedding their 
seed. These empty cones are readily 
known by their dark colour, the new 
cones being red and grey. The seed is 
mostly shed in March. As sold by the 
trade it contains only 35 to 4 5 per cent, 
of fertile seed, while the proportion is 
often less. The way to test it is to put 
the seed in water, when the fertile seeds 
sink. This large proportion of bad seed 
