average about 90 feet by 8 feet, and grow at the foot of a bank, in deep e pe pebbles in it, which looks like an old bank of the Tay, which is not far off. In Zhe Garden for 19th May 1900, some particulars are given of the trees here. One, planted in 1847, measured on 11th August 1892, 86½ feet by 8 feet 10 inches, and on 24th March 1900, 97 feet 4 inches by 9 feet 10 inches. A great many others were of about the same size. This proves the diminishing rate of increase, both in height and girth, after forty to fifty years’ growth, even when the lower branches remain. Mr. Fothringham states that all these measurements were taken by sending sae or boys up the trees, and not with a dendrometer. He adds that the temperature in February 1895 was for several days below zero, and on one night went down to −11°
There is probably no plantation in Great Britain about which so much has been written as the Taymount plantation on the estate of the Earl of Mansfield, in Perthshire. It lies about seven miles north of Perth, one mile from Stanley Station, and may be seen from the Highland Railway, which passes close to the east of it. The plantation covers eight acres of flat land, which is locally known as “till,” two feet of light loam over red clay, and which may be worth for agricultural purposes 12s, to 15s. per acre. This plantation was first fully described in the Gardeners’ Chronicle of 1oth, 17th, and 24th November 1888, by Dr. Schlich, than whom there can be no higher authority. It was planted by the late W. M‘Corquodale in the spring of 1860, with Douglas firs, two-year seedlings, two years transplanted, at 9 feet by 9 feet apart, with larch four years old, between every two firs, and an additional line of larch between every two rows, so that the trees stood 44 feet apart, and each acre contained 538 Douglas and 1613 larch. The latter were gradually thinned out, and were all removed by 1880. The first thinning of Douglas took place in 1887, when about half the trees had already disappeared, 277 per acre only remaining. Of these 75 per acre were cut, leaving 202 per acre.
Dr. Schlich made a careful estimate of a sample plot measuring , of an acre of average appearance, and had a tree felled to ascertain its actual contents ; and from these data came to the conclusion that the total per acre was 3738 cubic feet of wood over 3 inches diameter, exclusive of top and branches, which gives an annual increment of 133 cubic feet per acre. But this estimate being the gross volume, when reduced by about one-fourth, makes the quarter-girth measurement, as adopted in English practice, to be 2934 cubic feet.
After inspecting a sample area of Scots pine in the same district, Dr. Schlich goes on to say, “If grown in a well-stocked, overcrowded wood, and in localities of equal quality, Douglas fir is not likely to produce more solid wood, during the first thirty or forty years, than the larch, and probably also not more than Scotch pine.” He then goes into careful estimates of the probable future increase of the Douglas, based on data taken from America, where Dr. Mayr found that in the most favourable localities in the Cascade Mountains the average height of mature Douglas
1 At Balmoral, where there are 25,000 to 30,000 trees, planted in the ’eighties, on a northern aspect at 1000 to 1200 feet altitude, Mr. Michie informs me in a letter that this severe frost, when the temperature fell to −17½°, did no harm to the
Douglas fir.
