can hardly see where they were cut off, and some are four feet round; and I have used the same method with unhealthy chestnuts, beech, hornbeam, and wych elm, and with the same success."
Rate of Growth
The rate of growth in the oak is principally governed by the soil and situation, and varies so much that any estimates of its possible increase are of little value unless based on local experience. We often read calculations of the profits of planting, drawn from Continental experience or from exceptionally favourable cases in England, which are very misleading and greatly in excess of reasonable expectations, and there is no tree to which these remarks apply more strongly than to the oak.
Few plantations give more ample proof of this than those made by the Government in the woods at Alice Holt, which were planted between 1810 and 1830, with the object of providing timber for the navy, and which were no doubt done by experienced planters. But the growth has been so poor that, when I visited them in 1905, in company with Mr. Stafford Howard and Mr. Lascelles, we saw but few oaks which looked as if they would ever be fine trees, and their average value was not much over tos. per tree. In one place, called Willow Green, oaks of seventy years old were not over 30 or 4o feet high and not thick enough for gate-posts.[1]
In many parts of the Forest of Dean the results are not much better, and are largely attributed to over-thinning, and to the fact of the ground being thrown open to grazing too soon; but the soil and spring frosts must also have had a good deal to do with it.
In the New Forest the results are better, but not at all equal to what might have been expected. I am indebted to Mr. Stafford Howard for the following information on some of these plantations and the way in which they were made:—
Planting in the New Forest.—In order to make provision for the future needs of the navy, in view of the fact that planting had been greatly neglected in the New Forest, an Act was passed, 9 & 10 Will. III., for that purpose. Under this Act it was provided that 2000 acres should forthwith be enclosed and planted with timber for the use of the navy only, underwood and all other produce being excluded; that 200 acres should be enclosed annually for twenty years following, and that as soon as any of the land thus enclosed was safe from damage from cattle, it should be thrown open and a like area enclosed in its stead. The plantations described were made under the powers of this Act.
The precise form of cultivation employed was as follows:—
"Pits or beds of three spits of ground each were dug a yard apart, and three acorns planted triangularly in each bed. Half a bushel of acorns was allotted for each person to plant in one day. Two regarders attended every day during
- ↑ Mr. Howard says that in the lower part of the Goose Green enclosure, and in the Straights, there is much better timber, and that in Dr. Schlich's report on these woods over 300 acres were classified as good, where the trees attain a mean height of 60 feet.
