140 REVIEWS OF BOOKS. June 



" In favourable situations on the sides of the hills, larch of thirty 

 years' growth, thinned three times (say in ten, fifteen, and twenty 

 years) with 300 of the best trees remaining, is worth at present 

 prices £30 per acre; the thinnings realize from £10 to £15 per 

 acre, and pay for fencing, draining, planting, and cleaning the 

 plantations. In the bottom of the glens, whither the soils from 

 the adjoining heights gravitate, oak, ash, elm, and sycamore develop 

 into large timber trees, if allowed to occupy the ground for sixty or 

 seventy years, and yield an income of 30s. per acre per annum." 



Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland.. 

 Fourth Series. Vol. xvii. 1885. Edinburgh: W. Black- 

 wood & Sons. 



After two elaborate prize essays on the " Agriculture of Lanark and 

 Wigtown shires," follows a dissertation of seventy pages on the 

 "Woods, Forests, and Forestry of Ross-shire," by W. F. Gunn, contain- 

 ing so much that is interesting to our readers as to merit their 

 careful study. By the Board of Trade returns for 1882 there were 

 43,201 acres under wood, giving Eoss-shire the fifth place as a 

 wood-growing county in Scotland. The best hardwoods are to be 

 found on the sandstone and shaly rock, and the best Scotch fir and 

 larch on the conglomerate and gneiss. Pinus 'pinaster maritima 

 suffered least when grown as a shelter tree along the coast. Moun- 

 tain ash and birch affect the light soils above gneiss rock ; while 

 natural birch springs up all over the hills where there was little or 

 none before. The Pinaster, so useful for sheltering young planta- 

 tions on high ground, is only planted in a limited way. High 

 railway rates keep down the prices of larch and fir, practically 

 precluding their transport to southern manufacturing centres. The 

 larger sizes of larch have decreased in value from 2s. to Is. 6d. 

 within the last seven years. The Government Board of Trade now 

 brand fish barrels made of spruce and Scots fir, though allowing 

 larch barrels to be rebranded a second time. Large fir fetches from 

 8d. to lOd. per foot, chiefly for railway sleepers. Good ash fetches 

 Is. 6d. per cubic foot. Not much oak is sold. The cost of slit 

 planting averages about 8s. per acre for labour alone. Scots fir 

 suffers to a very limited extent from the caterpillar, beetle, and 

 weevil. The larch has to contend with the larch bug. Coccus laricis, 

 and other maladies. Overstraining of the tap-root induces tree 

 decay in exposed localities. But the essayist records splendid hard- 

 wood, some trees being 100 feet high, growing in this supposed 

 barren north-eastern boundary of Scotland, as well as thoroughly- 



