own forest of Corrour to show what is possible and what is not in the way of planting. The question has also been most ably dealt with by Lord Lovat and others in the well-known Report on Afforestation in Glenmore. The late Sir John Ramsden’s very extensive plantations at Ardverikie and Benalder, amounting to over 10,000 acres, have now in some cases attained an age that enables some estimate of their commercial value to be made, and we are told that during the war £100,000 was offered for 2,000 acres of timber on Loch Ericht, all above 1,100 feet elevation, and planted between 1875 and 1881, As far north as Braemore, in West Ross-shirc, 592 acres planted by the late Sir John Fowler were sold to the Government in 1917 for £52,500, and estimated, to contain over a million cubic feet; which shows, allowing for some previous thinnings, something like 2,000 feet per acre in fifty years, and a value of nearly is. per cubic foot. What these two lots would have been worth in normal times may be gathered from the fact that for the finest natural Scots pine I ever saw, standing only five to seven miles from the Caledonian Canal, I was told that the highest bid was under 3d. a foot; and I believe that a large quantity of similar but rougher pine in the Black Wood of Rannoch was sold after the war at very little more*
It is much pleasanter for any lover of forests to point to such eases as that of the Gairloch plantation of Douglas fir, which, we arc told, contains 7,490 cubic feet per acre at fifty-four years of age, or to such trees as can be seen at Inveraray, Bcnmore and other places on the West Coast; but all these were planted at a third of the cost they would now require.
In considering the question of afforestation, there arc other important questions to consider—namely, the cost of fencing, and the fact that much of the ground which is most suitable for planting is also most necessary to reserve for wintering. Plantations of any kind cannot be raised without an efficient deer fence calculated to last at least thirty years, and many of the cheap fences I have seen need frequent repairs long before that. They are also much more costly than formerly. Even in the old natural pine woods natural reproduction by seed is usually impossible without fencing, and the enclosure of a large area in order to reduce the average cost per acre almost always leads to the inclusion of land within the fence which is useless for planting, though often planted by those who have insufficient knowledge and experience. On this point a paper in the Transactions of the Scottish Arboricultural Society by the late Mr, Boyd at Inverleiver is most instructive. Though larch is at present more or less under a cloud, on account of the ravages of disease on land unsuited to it by soil or climate, it has one great virtue in this connection which is not sufficiently recognised. If planted thin enough to suit its natural requirements, and kept thin enough to allow sun to warm the land, the fall of its leaf certainly tends to encourage the growth of useful grass, which when thrown open to sheep, cattle or deer as soon as the young trees are old enough, develops into better pasture than the land would bear without the larch. That, at least, is my experience. But this is not the case with spruce, pine or Douglas fir, which must be kept as close as they will bear crowding, to suppress side branches. That larch will grow well in the East of Scotland
