in the middle 100 scales, with 90 good and 110 bad seeds; in the lower part 94 scales, with 188 bad seeds—the whole cone, therefore, giving 219 scales, with 438 seeds, of which 90 were good.
Cultivation
The best account we have of the introduction of the deodar is given by Ravenscroft, who states that the Hon. Leslie Melville sent seeds! in 1831 which were sown at Melville in Fifeshire, at Dropmore, and elsewhere.
Lord H. Bentinck sent some to Welbeck in 1832, but it was not until 1841 that the Right Honourable T.F. Kennedy, then at the head of the Woods and Forests, took steps to procure seed in large quantities from the Himalayas. His proceedings are described at great length in the Thirty-first Report of the Commissioners of Woods, pp. 168-172, and pp. 440-454 (1853), and further in the Thirty-fourth Report (1856), pp. 87, 88, and pp. 120-122. From this it appears that 60,000 seedlings were distributed in the spring of 1856 amongst the New, Dean, and Delamere forests, and a further 40,000 were sent out in the following autumn.
I am indebted to Mr. E. Stafford Howard, C.B., for information as to the results of these experiments as given in letters from the Hon. Gerald Lascelles and the late Mr. P. Baylis. The former says :—"I have made search for any records of the planting of the deodars, but can find nothing worthy of quotation. It is a fact that it was very largely planted here, as we can see for ourselves,—more, however, as an avenue or ornamental tree than, strictly speaking, for timber. Large quantities were raised in the nursery at Rhinefield, which at that time was managed by one Nelson, who in a small book speaks of the very large experience he has had in raising and transplanting deodars. The tree is, however, a failure by reason of the way in which it suddenly dies off, unaccountably, when it is about forty or fifty years old. There are some notable successes, such as the grove at Boldrewood? and others, but I must have cut hundreds which had died off suddenly.”
Mr. Baylis wrote on 8th May 1905: “I cannot give much definite information on the subject, though Crown Keeper Smith remembers some deodars being planted about 1857 along the sides of the rides in the High Meadow estate; but large numbers of these have perished, and there are no very fine trees among those that are left. A ride along the top of the Churchill enclosure was also planted about the same time with similar trees; but many of these also have died, and I cannot say that any of them have thriven well, though one tree has occasionally borne cones. I think that the climate here is too cold and damp for them to thrive, and that they cannot stand the damp cold of our winters in the Forest, though on the slopes of the Malvern hills they flourish fairly well.”
This liability of the deodar to die after attaining considerable size has been often noticed, and, so far as I have observed, is most common on soils which are poor in lime.
1 A tree raised from these seeds was planted near the Director’s Office at Kew, and had attained a height of 32 feet in 1864. It became diseased and was removed in 1888. Cf. Kew Hand List of Conifere, xiv. (1903). 2 The best deodar at Boldrewood is now 64 feet high.
