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their trunks. In default of these conditions recourse must be had to pruning, which entails considerable expense, and must be repeated at frequent intervals.
The second is the tendency which I have observed in so many places for the trees to ripen their leading shoot prematurely in dry summers, and to make a fresh start in the autumn when wet warm weather sets in. The result is that the second shoot is weak, immature, and usually becomes crooked either from frost, wind, or the settling of birds on it. A double lead is then often produced, and the result is seen in many plantations, in the more or less crooked stems,’ or in forks, which must seriously depreciate the value of the timber when brought to the sawmill.
A third is the effect of gales on the leading shoots, which owing to their great length and weakness, seems greater than on any other conifer, especially as owing to the rapid growth of the tree it overtops other species with which it may be mixed. Even if the tops are not broken they become crooked, and often forked, in places exposed to wind, and the taller the trees become the more they are liable to this source of injury.
For these reasons it seems to me that the most profitable way of utilising Douglas fir, is to cut it at a comparatively early age, and utilise the wood for pit timber and estate purposes, for which purposes I am disposed to class it as superior to spruce or silver fir and inferior to larch.
In Ireland the Douglas fir grows very fast, and has attained in many places a large size. The late Lord Powerscourt planted at Powerscourt in 1865, with his own hands a tree which measured in 1904 100 feet in height and 9½ feet in girth. There are good trees at Fota, Queenstown, 84 feet by 9½ feet in 1903; at Carton, 81 feet by 7½ feet in the same year; at Stradbally Hall, Queen’s County, 86 feet by 8 feet 3 inches in 1907; at Coollattin, Wicklow, 85 feet by 9 feet in 1906. At Coollattin there are a few natural seedlings,’ and several trees bear cones profusely ; but the forester has not been able to raise plants from their seeds, doubtless owing to the cones being attacked by the insect which has done so much damage at Durris in Kincardineshire. At Castlewellan, Co. Down, there are fine trees, about 80 feet in height, which I could not measure on account of heavy rain when I was there in 1908. One measured by the Earl of Annesley in August 1908 is 79 feet by 10 feet, but lost 12 feet of its top in a gale in 1902.
The late Mr. John Booth of Berlin was a great admirer of this tree, and for many years advocated its planting in Germany, where it is now beginning to be looked upon as one of the most valuable forest trees. The result® of an experiment made by the late Prince Bismarck, on his estates at Sachsenwald near Hamburg, was sent me by Mr. Booth just before his death, and may be summarised as follows:—
An area of 1.16 acre, the soil being a coarse, somewhat loamy, diluvial sand, was planted in 1881, half with four-year old Douglas, 5 feet apart, and half with spruce, 4 feet apart. In 1906, the Douglas plot consisted of 869 trees, measuring 3300 cubic feet of timber; while the spruce plot, 1335 trees, only
1 This defect is clearly seen in the Taymount plantation.
2 Natural seedlings were seen by Henry, also at Dereen and at Powerscourt.
3 Published in detail in Zeitschrift für Forst- und Jagdwesen, 1906, p. 8, of which a translation appeared in Trans. Roy. Scot. Arbor. Soc. xx. 104 (1907).