10 On the Native Forests of Aberdeenshire. 



several houses, fabricated of this wood many years ago, exhibit- 

 ing no symptoms of decay, and notoriously' free from the fatal 

 influence of the dry rot, in all cases where no foreign wood has been 

 employed along with it. * 



Such is the value and durability of the wood of the aged trees ; 

 but I have occasion to know, from the experience of some of my 

 neighbours, that the wood of the young trees of these native fo- 

 rests, is not in the least more durable or more strong than that of 

 cultivated fir of equal age. The cultivated iir, however, through 

 the numerous and extensive plantations which have been made of 

 it, as for instance in this valley of Alford, within the last 60 or 80 

 years, is rarely seen to live to any great age ; the great bulk of it, 

 indeed, not surviving a period of from 40 to 60, or in rare cases 

 70 years, so that its wood cannot compare Avith that of the native 

 trees, which attain an age of 200 years and upwards. 



Is it possible to ascertain the cause of the early death of the cul- 

 tivated fir, or find a remedy for this notorious evil ? These are 

 questions which have been anxiously put by many whose interest 

 is deeply concerned in discovering a correct answer to them ; and 

 they are surely questions of a rational curiosity. I shall not stop to 

 discuss the merits of several conjectures upon this subject ; as for 

 instance, that the cultivated fir loses au essential tap root, by being 

 transplanted from the nursery, — a supposed evil, which it has been 

 attempted to remedy, but without success, by sowing the seeds in 

 the place of their final destination ; or that Ave have got in the nur- 

 series an inferior variety of the fir, — another supposed evil, to which 

 a remedy equally in vain has been applied, of getting seeds from 

 the native forests ; t or that there are destructive matters lodged in 



• Is the dry rot a fungus originally peculiar to America ? It was never heard 

 of in this valley so long as our supply of wood came only from our own forests 

 and plantations, or from the Baltic or Norway. American wood has been re- 

 cently employed in buildings for some of the finer finishings, and the dry rot is 

 now not unknown, for one gentleman's house has suffered considerably from it. 

 If this be its origin, a very trifling incident may introduce it. A packing-box 

 of American wood left in a cellar, or the American deal of a common trunk, may 

 bring the first seeds of the destructive fungus, which when once established creeps 

 over all the wood within its reach. It began first in a cellar in the house to which 

 I have referred, and spread into the neighbouring door-posts and lobbies, not 

 sparing the Braemar wood, of which the house is partly constructed. 



■f- We would request the attention of those who wish to prosecute this inquiry, 

 to a valuable paper on the Varieties of the Scotch Fir, by Mr. Geo. Don, in the 

 Caledonian Hort. Mem. Vol. I. p. 121, which seems to have been overlooked by 

 more recent writers. Mr. Don has been led to distinguish at least four varieties 

 of the Pinus sylvestris, " one of which is of so fixed and marked a character, 

 that it may probably be entitled to rank as a species," distinct from the common 

 tree, whose branches form a pyramidal head ; and he proposes the trivial name of 

 horizontalis, from the horizontal and drooping direction of its boughs. In this 

 tree the leaves are broader than in the common variety, and serrulated, nor mar- 

 ginated, and they are distinguishable at a distance by their lighter and beauti- 

 f>il glaucous colour. The bark of the trunk is not so rugged, and its cones are 

 gen«ally thicker, not so much pointed, and smoother than in tlie common Scotch 



