perhaps more valuable, as being more rare, the expression of boldness, and picturesqueness, peculiar to itself, and which it seems to have caught from the wild and rugged chasms, rocks, and precipices of its native mountains. There its irregular and spiry top, and branches, harmonize admirably with the abrupt variation of the surrounding hills, and suit well the gloomy grandeur of those frowning heights.

Like all highly expressive and characteristic trees, much more care is necessary in introducing the Larch into artificial scenery judiciously, than round-headed trees. If planted in abundance, it becomes monotonous, from the similitude of

of

its form in different specimens; it should therefore be introduced sparingly, and always for some special purpose. This purpose may be, either to give spirit to a group other trees, to strengthen the already picturesque character of a scene, or to give life and variety to one naturally tame and uninteresting. All these objects can be fully effected by the Larch; and although it is by far the most suited to harmonize with, and strengthen the expression of scener y naturally grand, or picturesque, with which it most readily enters into combination, yet, in the hands of taste, there can be no reason why so marked a tree should not be employed in giving additional expression to scenery of a tamer character.

The extremely rapid growth of this tree when planted upon thin, barren, and dry soils, is another great merit which it possesses as an ornamental tree; and it is also a necessary one to enable it to thrive well on those very rocky and barren soils, where it is most in character with the surrounding objects. It is highly valuable to produce effect or shelter suddenly, on portions of an estate, too thin or meagre in their soil, to afford the sustenance necessary to the growth of many other deciduous trees.

The Larch is the great timber tree of Europe. Its wood is remarkably heavy, strong, and durable, exceeding in all those qualities the best English oak. To these, it is said to add the peculiarity of being almost uninflammable, and resisting the influence of heat for a long time. Vitruvius relates that when Cæsar attacked the castle of Larignum, near the Alps, whose gate was commanded by a tower built of this wood, from the top of which the besieged annoyed him with their stones and darts, he commanded his army to surround it with faggots, and set fire to the whole. When

however all the former was consumed, he was astonished to find the Larch tower uninjured.* The wood is also recommended for the decks of vessels, and the masts of ships, as it is little liable either to fly in splinters in an engagement, or to catch fire readily.

In Great Britain, immense plantations of this tree are made with a view to profit; and although as yet nothing like rearing trees for timber has been attempted here, nevertheless the time must come when our attention will necessarily be turned in this direction. When such is the case, it is probable that the Larch will be found to be as much an object of profit, on this side of the Atlantic, as on the other. Indeed, we are much inclined to believe, that thousands of acres of our sterile soils in some districts, might now be profitably planted with this tree.

In Scotland, the Larch was first introduced in the year 1738, when eleven plants were given to the Duke of Athol, who afterwards struck by the rapidity of their growth, and the excellency of their timber, planted thousands of acres with them. As a specimen of what is done in timber growing abroad, and the peculiar capacity of the Larch for thriving on poor soils, we shall make some extracts from the account given of its growth in Scotland, by Sir T. D. Lauder.

“The late Duke of Athol planted large districts with this tree, and thereby converted the heathy wastes into valuable forests; but this was not the whole of the improvement he thus created. The Larch being a deciduous tree, sheds upon the earth so great a shower of decayed spines every succeed

* Newton's Vitruvius, p. 40.

ing autumn, that the annual addition which is made to the soil, cannot be less, than from a third of an inch to half an inch, according to the magnitude of the trees. This we have often had opportunities of proving, by our remarks made on the surfaces of newly cleaned pleasure walks. The result of planting a moor with Larches then, is, that when the trees have grown so much as to exclude the air and moisture on the surface, the heath is soon exterminated; and the soil gradually increasing by the decomposition of the leaflets annually thrown down by the Larches, grass begins to grow as the trees rise in elevation, so as to allow greater freedom for the circulation of the air below, and thus, land which was not worth one shilling an acre, becomes most valuable pasture; and we can say that our own experience amply bears out the fact. The Duke of Athol found that the value of the pasture in oak copses, was worth five or six shillings (sterling) per acre, for eight years only, in twenty-four, when the copse is cut down again. Under a Scotch fir plantation it is not worth sixpence more per acre, than it was before it was planted; under Beech and Spruce, it is worth less than it was before. But under Larch, where the ground was not worth one shilling per acre, before it was planted, the pasture becomes worth from eight to ten shillings an acre, after the first thirty years, when all the thinnings have been completed, and the trees left for naval purposes, at the rate of four hundred to the acre, and twelve feet apart.

The Larch is a very quick grower. Between 1740, and 1744, eleven trees were planted at Blair, the girths of which, at growths from seventy-three to seventy-six years, ranged from eight feet two inches, to ten feet. This lot was calculated to average one hundred feet each, in the whole, one

thousand two hundred feet. The total measurement of this lot of twenty-two trees, therefore, is two thousand six hundred and forty-five feet, which at the moderate value of two shillings per foot, would give the sum of £264, 10s. ($1174) for twenty-two Larch trees, of something under eighty years old. We find by the Duke of Athol's tables of measurement, that trees planted by him in 1743, were nine feet three inches in circumference, when measured at four feet from the ground, in 1795.

The plantations of Larch made by Duke James of Athol, between 1733 and 1759, amounted to one thousand, nine. hundred and twenty-eight trees. Of these, eight hundred and seventy-three, were cut down between 1809 and 1816. The Duke of Athol had the satisfaction to behold a British frigate built in 1819 and 1820 at Woolwich yard, out of timber planted at Blair and Dunkeld, by himself and the Duke his predecessor. And the extensive and increasing Larch forests of those districts, may yet be called upon largely to supply both our naval and mercantile dock-yards. Mankind are prone to cherish and embalm the memory of individuals whose claims to notoriety have originated in their wide-spread destruction of the human race; but they are too apt to forget those who have been the benefactors of mankind. That a vessel formed from trees of his introduction and planting, should have waved the British flag over the ocean, is likely to be all the reward contemporaneous or posthumous, which will ever adhere to the noble Duke, for the great good he has done to his country, and for the blessed legacy he has left to his descendants, by the plantation of about fifteen thousand five hundred and seventy-three English acres of ground, which consumed above twenty-seven millions, four hundred and thirty-one thousand, and six hundred trees.