12 On the Native Forests of Aberdeenshire. 



partially filled up, evidently at different times, long posterior to 

 the planting of these trees, by spruces and larches, and some other 

 species ; but no trees on the ground are of the same age with them- 

 selves, excepting birches and a few oaks, whose appearance clearly 

 shews them of the same date with the firs, with which they are 

 every where regularly planted in rows. The oaks are for the most 

 part stunted and decaying trees, but the case is the reverse with 

 the Scotch firs. They are trees of good growth, some of them 

 upwards of six feet in circumference, and have an uncommonly 

 healthy and vigorous aspect, exhibiting in their branches and tops 

 the bright yellowish-brown bark, and dense healthy foliage, which 

 marks good specimens of the native fir. None of them have been 

 known to die for years past, and every thing in their appearance 

 betokens the probability, that they may live to the ordinary period 

 of the trees of the native forests. Their present age is proved, by 

 the annual rings of growth^ to be about 90 years. 



There is nothing in the soil where these trees are found to ac- 

 count for their excellence ; for it is a rather poor clayey shingle, 

 of the very same nature with the soil of many other much more re- 

 cent plantations in the immediate neighbourhood, where the trees 

 are dying in great numbers. The peculiarity which has insured 

 their long life and superior vigour, evidently exists in the circum- 

 stance that they have had ample room to establish themselves in 

 the soil, and to occupy spaces proportioned to the natural size of 

 their species, free from the encroachment of other competitors of 

 their own kind. They have stood thin on the ground as long as 

 they are remembered ; and the circumstance of their being found, 

 in some places, in regular lines with the birches and oaks, indicates 

 that they and the birches had been scattered here and there through 

 a plantation of oak trees, no doubt with the view of affording them 

 shelter ; and as the oaks do not appear to have thriven well, and 

 the birches are naturally of much less size, these have presented no 

 impediment to the more vigorous growth of the fir. 



Our fir plantations, which are almost universally visited with an 

 early and entire destruction, are planted in a very different way. 

 Two or three thousand plants, and frequently more, are crowded 

 into a Scotch acre, leaving only IJ or 2 square yards to each tree. 

 These, in the course of a very few years, begin to encroach on each 

 other, and being all of the same age, and nearly equal vigour, they 

 go on for some time maintaining a mutual struggle for existence. 

 In the meantime, while each of them sends up a slender and tall 

 top to reach the free air and sun, their roots are mutually checked 

 by each other, so that not one of them gets any firm hold of the 

 soil. The destruction at last commences at some point or other ; 

 for it is impossible that so many trees, of such large natural growth, 

 can go on together in such limited space. The rotting and fall of 

 some of the trees, leaves the neighbouring ones exposed to the in- 

 fluence of every storm, which they are unable to resist, owing to 

 their unnaturally tall growth, and the feeble hold their roots have 



