never seen or heard of such an instance, and on writing to Prof. Curtis he could not tell me of anything at all near it.
The best estimate I have is from Sir Hugh Beevor of a plantation at Petworth belonging to Lord Leconfield. It is growing on a steep hill facing east, on sandy loam overlying sandstone, and at thirty-two years after planting contained about 300 trees or more per acre, averaging 15 feet each, which makes about 4500 feet per acre. At Mailscott Lodge, in High Meadow Wood, Forest of Dean, he saw a small plantation, thirty-four years planted, in which the trees on an area of half an acre numbered 214, averaging 9g feet per tree, equal to about 3800 feet per acre.
The best example on my own property is a plantation at Hilcot, now about fifty-four years old, in which there are 2500 trees on an area of about twenty acres. The trees average about 25 feet on the better parts of the land, and 10 to 15 feet on the worst, or about 18 feet over the whole area, equal to about 2200 feet per acre. There are some beech, wych elm, and other hard woods amongst them, which might make up a total of 3000 cubic feet per acre, and though the larch might stand ten to twenty years longer they are not now making a profitable increment.
Mr. J.E. Hellyar Stooke of Hereford sends me the following particulars of a sale in 1907, of larch sixty to seventy-five years old, growing on a hill 400 to 500 feet high, the soil being stiff clay overlying limestone facing east to south. There was no disease except on some of the smaller branches; the trees were all sound, and would probably have continued to grow for many years.
These trees were sold standing, by auction, at such a distance from a railway station that the hauliers could only make one journey daily.
At what age it pays best to fell a crop of larch is a question which depends entirely on the growth of the trees and the local value: in some cases thirty to forty years may be the most profitable age, in most fifty to sixty; and where the trees are planted with a good mixture of beech, and continue to grow well after this period, it may pay to let them stand to 100 years old, beyond which they will seldom if ever continue to make a profitable increase.
I should say that £100 per acre was a very fair average valuation of a clean
