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As the seed can now be procured in quantity and at a cheap rate, even when home-grown seed is not available, there seems to be no reason why this beautiful tree should not be raised at the same rate as the common silver fir and planted in preference to the latter, for though it has not yet had time to attain its full size in this country it grows quite as fast, and from what little we know of its timber is likely to be at least as valuable. Its average rate of growth is from 1 to 2 feet annually when once established; and though we have as yet no evidence that it will endure dense shade as well as the silver fir, yet the accounts of its growth in the Caucasus lead one to expect that it will do so.

Among the numerous specimens that we have measured in various places in England, I have seen none to surpass a very healthy and vigorous tree which grows in a wood facing east on the banks of the river at Eggesford, the property of the Earl of Portsmouth in Devonshire, which in April 1904 measured 84 feet by 5 feet 7 inches, and had produced cones. But a tree growing in a wood called Hook’s Grove at Bayfordbury is perhaps taller ; it was about 85 feet by 6 feet 10 inches in 1907.

At Strathfieldsaye, in the same year, I measured one as 78 feet by 6 feet 7 inches, and at Hemsted, in Kent, there is a tall but very slender specimen, not over forty years planted, which bids fair to become a very large tree. In 1905 it was 68 feet by only 3 feet 7 inches. At Lynhales, Herefordshire, the seat of S. Robinson, Esq., another is 70 feet by 5½ feet and growing freely.

In Wales it is thriving at Penrhyn; where there are two trees, one with its top broken being about 75 feet by 10 feet; the other even taller measures 6 feet 10 inches in girth; and at Hafodunos, where it does well in plantations, Henry measured one 60 feet by 6 feet 7 inches in 1904.

In Scotland the largest recorded in 1891 was at Poltalloch, and then was said to measure 70 feet by 6 feet, but when measured by Mr. Melville in 1906 he made it only 734 feet by 7 feet 4 inches.

The finest I have seen myself is one at Moncreiffe which, in 1907, I made to be no less than 79 feet by 6½ feet; a healthy tree from which many seedlings have been raised. This is stated by Hunter to have been planted about 1856, and in 1888 was only 30 feet by 2 feet 2 inches. It is said to have been hybridised by the silver fir, but I could not see anything in the seedlings to distinguish them.

In Ireland it also grows very well. A tree at Carton, the seat of the Duke of Leinster, was 74 feet by 5 feet 4 inches, and one at Fota 68 feet by about 6 feet in 1903. Another at Mount Shannon, Limerick, measured, in 1905, 75 feet by 8 feet 9 inches. A good specimen at Ballykilcavan, Queen’s County, measured 68 feet by 5 feet 2 inches in 1907. There are many fine healthy specimens at Dereen in Co. Kerry.

In the University Botanic Garden at Upsala, in Sweden, a tree was seen by Henry in 1908 which was about 4o feet high and branched into three stems near the ground, the result evidently of injury to the leader by severe frost in early youth.