and Corsican pines, planted on what appears to be pure drift sea sand, but Colonel Feilden suggested to me that their health and vigour may be due to the presence of lime, produced by sea-shells in the underlying beds. These trees were, as I was told by Mr. Donald Munro, forester to the Earl of Leicester, partly raised from seeds produced by the old trees in the garden at Holkham, and planted thirty to forty years ago, together with Pinus insignis, P. Pinaster, and P. sylvestris, to form a shelter belt and bind the loose drifting sand. Though some of the trees had preserved the peculiar leaf, colour, and habit of the Corsican and Austrian varieties, there were many others which could not be identified with certainty. A great number of seed- lings have sprung up on the south or landward side of the hills, of which the largest were twelve to thirteen years old and 9 to 10 feet high; and many smaller ones of various ages were growing freely even in wet spots among tall rushes. Plate 115 shows the appearance of these seedlings. Rabbits and hares do not seem very abundant here, and I saw none of the Corsican seedlings barked, though one or two of the much scarcer Pinasters had suffered.
Mr. Richards, forester to Lord Penrhyn, is enthusiastic as to the merits of this tree, and writes to me that in North Wales it will grow where all other trees fail, that it stands wind better than any other conifer, and if planted in March and April few deaths take place. He grows it from seed collected in March and April and sown in May. He says there are many trees on the Penrhyn estate 80 to 90 feet high, but I did not see any quite so large as this. He considers that the timber is very good, better than that of any conifer he knows.
Captain Rutherford, agent to the Earl of Carnarvon at Highclere, also speaks very well of this tree, and sends me the dimensions of two not over seventy years old, one of which contains 201, the other 150 cubic feet, and a plank which he was good enough to give me certainly bears out his good opinion of the timber. It has pale red heartwood and yellowish sapwood, though it seems somewhat coarser in grain, and inferior to the wood of the Calabrian variety which I brought from Italy.
The Corsican pine* has not proved hardy in New England. It may be occasion- ally seen in the middle States, but there is no evidence, in large or old specimens, that this tree will really become a valuable acquisition for American plantations.
Cultivation: Austrian Pine
This tree is often sold as Corsican pine, but should never be planted knowingly except upon land where no better tree will grow, or to form a shelter belt on windy exposed hillsides of chalk or limestone, or on the sea-coast. For though a tree of extraordinary hardiness and rapid growth, it produces such a mass of large branches, and is so much inclined to fork, that its timber is extremely coarse, rough, and knotty, and would be unsaleable except at a very low rate or for pit-props. My father planted many of this tree, and I have found that though they make girth more rapidly than any other pine, they only thrive on sunny situations, where
1 Garden and Forest, x. 471 (1897).
