I. 4. THE LARCH. 91 



bility is even, superior to the oak itself, and in old vessels the 

 timbers made of hacmatack have been found entirely sound, 

 when those of white oak were completely decayed. On these 

 accounts, it is preferred before all other woods, for knees, for 

 beams, and for top timbers. The ship-builders make two va- 

 rieties of the wood, the gray and the red, of which the latter is 

 considered best. Its great hardness makes it valuable for steps 

 in exposed situations ; and its compactness gives it great power 

 of resisting the action of fire, and renders it nearly incombus- 

 tible, except when splintered. It would be better than any 

 other wood in buildings intended to be fire-proof. 



On account of the very valuable qualities of the wood, the 

 hacmatack would deserve to be extensively cultivated, and there 

 are thousands of acres of cold and swampy land, where it was 

 found naturally, which are now unproductive, and which might 

 be clothed with it. It has, however, been found to be far infe- 

 rior in rapidity of growth to the European larch, which very 

 nearly resembles it in appearance, and in the excellent qualities 

 of its wood. This, therefore, should be preferred, as likely to 

 produce in the same time, a larger quantity of timber from the 

 same surface and at the same expense. 



On favorable soils, the European larch is fit for every useful 

 purpose in forty years' growth.* Its annual rate of increase in 

 Scotland has been found to be from one to one and a half 

 inches in circumference at six feet from the ground, on trunks 

 from ten to fifty years of age. It has, moreover, the property 

 of flourishing on surfaces almost without soil, thickly strown 

 with fragments of rocks, on the high and bleak sides and tops 

 of hills, where vegetation scarcely exists. It was in such situ- 

 ations as this, of a description which answers but too well to 

 many waste spots in Massachusetts, that the most successful 

 experiments were made, in Scotland, by the Dukes of Athol. 

 These are so interesting in themselves, and so deserving of imi- 

 tation, that a brief account of them cannot be considered unac- 

 ceptable or out of place here.f 



The estates of the Dukes of Athol are in the north of Scot- 



* Loudon's Arboretum, IV, 2353, et seq. 



t Highland Society's Transactions as quoted in Loudon's Arboretum, 2359, et seq. 



