advocated for shade-bearing species; but it is equally dangerous to over-thin, and thus bring about starvation, and consequently weakness, by cold winds.
Cultivation
Whether the system of notching or pitting is adopted must depend on the local conditions and the size of the trees to be planted. If not more than 18 inches to 2 feet in height, notching, when carefully done, is sometimes as successful as pitting, but in very dry summers a large proportion of the trees will die whichever way the planting is done. In my own experience allowance must be made, in calculating the cost of planting, for a loss of about 20 per cent on an average, though this is often much exceeded when the trees are planted after Christmas, or when their roots have become dry, or when careless workmen have been employed without very close and constant supervision. This is allowing nothing for damage done by hares and rabbits, which, unless thoroughly killed down before planting and kept out by a really effectual wire fence, will soon destroy a great many of the young trees.
Having once planted the trees, the success of the plantation will depend more on soil and climate than on the skill of the planter. For though larch will, owing to their extraordinary vigour, grow almost anywhere up to fifteen to twenty years old, they will not attain a large size unless the soil is moderately fertile and well drained and the situation open and airy. If large trees are desired, I should always advise a mixture of beech or birch being planted with them or three to four years later ; but where the crop can be profitably realised as small poles, or where the soil and climate are really favourable for larch, they may be planted at four feet apart without mixture. The distance apart and the mixture of other trees can only be decided by local experience, the object in view being to keep the trees thick enough to suppress the grass without depriving them of enough light and air to keep their lateral branches alive until they are fifteen to twenty years old. All thinnings should be based on these considerations, and the poorer the soil the more distance is required between the trees to keep them growing. On my own soil I have repeatedly noticed that if grass already exists when the trees are planted, it is impossible to keep the larch thick enough to smother the grass, without crowding each other to the point of starvation and disease, and in such land a mixture of beech, at the rate of one beech to two or three larch, is essential. The result of this mixture is that the larch, instead of beginning to decay at forty to sixty years old, as it often does when on soil deficient in natural fertility, at which period it may be worth 5s. to 15s. per tree, will live and increase in girth till at least 100 years, when they may be worth from 41 to £3 or £4 each. After they have been cut the beech may remain, or if not thick enough to stand with
advantage, the land will be left in a very much better condition for replanting than after a crop of pure larch. !
Prof. H.M. Ward gave in Nature, xxxvii. 207 (1887), the following account of an experiment conducted by Prof. Hartig:—"There is a plantation of larches at Freising, near Munich, with young beeches growing under the shade of the larches. The latter are seventy years old, and are excellent trees in every way. About twenty years
