similar material might be produced to-day, if close planting and slow growth were the rule. To prove this, he gives the actual dimensions of Scots fir grown under two different conditions in Ireland.
| Grown thirty to the acre, with spreading crowns. |
Grown 200 to the acre, with small crowns. | |||
| Girth | 5 | feet | 5 | feet. |
| Height | 50 | feet„ | 75 | feet.„ |
| Age | 40 | years | 100 | years. |
| Diameter | 20 | inches | 20 | inches. |
| Heartwood | 12 | inches„ | 19 | inches.„ |
| Sapwood | 8 | inches„ | 1 | inch. |
| Rings per inch | 4, | uneven | 10, | regular. |
| These trees are quickly grown on deep soft soil, and are liable to be blown over. Timber, coarse, knotty, light, and perishable; large amount of sapwood. |
These trees were slowly grown on a hill-side on poor and stony soil; standing close they resist storms. Timber fine- grained, hard, heavy, durable, and equal to best Memel. Scarcely any sapwood. | |||
Mr. Webber has kindly written to me that the trees just mentioned grow on his own property at Kellyville, near Athy, in Co. Kildare. A beam, made out of the fine pine timber grown on the hill-side, placed in the front of a conservatory twenty-five years ago, is still sound and good. Mr. Webber has Scots pine thriving on pure rock, where there is little or no soil. He states that at Emo Park near Portarlington and on the road to Maryborough there are striking instances of pine succeeding on pure black bog, and self-sown seedlings may be seen spreading all over the turf-moss. He reiterates the conclusions given above, namely, that the pine should be planted densely on poor soils, where it will resist the wind and yield timber without any appreciable sapwood, whereas on deep soft soils it is easily blown over and yields In the bog in Emo Park, Mr. Webber found great bases of Scots pines with their roots in the boulder clay, of gigantic size, showing that the tree was indigenous before the bog began to grow ages ago.
In some parts of Ireland, Scots pine may be seen thriving on deep peat-moss, the condition necessary for success being judicious preliminary drainage. In mosses soaking with water, trees languish and die on account of the lack of air at their roots. On the other hand, if the drainage is too deep, the upper layer of the peat becomes so dry, that the trees suffer from want of water. Near Castledawson in Co. Derry, a considerable area of undrained peat-moss is covered by healthy and vigorous pine trees, which are natural seedlings, the product of seeds blown from an adjoining plantation. Here, however, the peat-moss rests on the side of a sloping sandhill and is not waterlogged. Natural pine seedlings are often seen on peat-mosses, struggling for life in the wettest situations ; and doubtless, if cattle and rabbits were excluded, these would in time take possession. At Churchill in Co. Armagh, the property of Harry Verner, Esq., considerable plantations of Scots pine, intermixed with a small proportion of larch, were made in 1861 on deep peat-moss, which had been thoroughly
coarse and valueless timber.
