EEPORT ON LARCH FORESTS. 417 



far confirmatory of Headrick's report, that there exists an old 

 tradition respecting the Dunkeld trees having been imported 

 from a foreign country, nursed in a glass-house, and afterwards 

 treated as Mr Lockhart is said to have treated his larches on the 

 banks of the Clyde. In their absence, however, it is likely to 

 suppose the story of treatment would descend to, or be en- 

 grafted on, the next oldest trees of the species in the country ; 

 but be this as it may, it is worthy of notice, that although the 

 larch plants of the first introduction, taken direct from their 

 native country, had existed for a long period, yet they became 

 of no value in a national point of view, compared to the re- 

 introduction of the tree by plants, the produce of English seed, 

 and consequently hardier, and better adapted to the climate of 

 Scotland. This leads to acclimation, which I have found to be 

 of the greatest importance to several species of coniferae, and to 

 the larch in particular. Yet the influence of acclimation is 

 denied by some, and doubted by many ; and it is quite clear 

 that the great majority of planters pay no attention to the sub- 

 ject whatever. Few men have done more in behalf of botany 

 and vegetable physiology than the late Professor Lindley ; yet, 

 as far as I have seen from his writings, he had little or no faith 

 in the powers of acclimation.* But, as his statements are 

 made respecting agricultural and annual crops which have no 

 existence during winter, perhaps his remarks should not be 

 held as relating to trees. The stems of the Indian cress, kidney 

 bean, mignonette, potatoes, &c, are succulent and annual, and 

 no climatic influence could reasonably be expected to inure 

 them to the frosts of winter, or render them hardy to any per- 

 ceptible extent. With the larch, however, it is very different ; 

 in a congenial soil and climate, with judicious management, it 

 sometimes displays its top shoot at the height of 100 feet, after 

 having stood that number of winters. I am not prepared to 

 say the influence of acclimation will extend, making the tree 

 more and more hardy in proportion to the number of succes- 

 sive generations that are produced by seed sowing ; it may be 

 that a few generations of the tree in this country will render 

 it as hardy as its nature will admit of becoming. The planta- 

 tions with which I am surrounded, and from which I draw 

 my experience, are generally very healthy, and probably are 



* Dr Lindley says : — " But if no good evidence can be produced of plants 

 having become, acclimated by repeated sowings of their seeds, the facts on the 

 other side are numerous and conclusive. The Peruvian annual called Marvel 

 of Peru or Mirdbilds, the common Indian cress or Tropceolum, the scarlet 

 running kidney bean, the Tomato, the mignonette (an African plant), tin* 

 Palma Christi or Ricinus, all natives of hot climates, have been annually raised 

 from seed ripened in this country, some of them for two hundred generations, 

 yet have in no appreciable degree acquired hardiness, but the earliest frosts 

 destroy them as formerly." — Agricultural Cyclopadia, p. 26. 



