254 WOODS AND WILDS OF SHETLAND. [Feb., 



eleventh of the country is cultivated and the rest is hill (total area, 

 563,200 acres ; cultivated arable and pasture land, 50,720 acres), 

 the islands are nearly all hill, while the hills are as bare as our barest 

 downs. Instead of being handsomely whiskered with junipers 

 twelve feet high and more, as you may see them at Comb Valley, 

 near Albury, on the thin chalk of the North Downs, the shrubs of 

 the scathold are of the poorest description. In some districts the 

 surface soil is removed from the hills, and carried away, in accordance 

 with the custom of a defective agriculture ; and, if this is not the 

 case, the force of the wind, charged as it is with saline particles, 

 prevents even the hardiest shrubs from thriving. At the best, the 

 covering of the hills consists only of stunted heather, rough grasses, 

 rushes, sedges, moss, and patches of the blackberry, Vacciniuvi 

 viyrtillus, and Cranberry. Hills more black and dreary would be 

 hard to find, and even if Shetland were not extremely interestiug 

 from the character or pursuits of its sea-born population, and the 

 abundance of its birds and fishes, it would be worth a visit, so that 

 the traveller from the South might be more thankful ever after 

 for the blessing of those natural ornaments whose beauty ' never 

 palls.' 



We may thank the planters of Shetland for having ascertained, 

 experimentally, the kind of trees best suited for their exposed 

 islands, and which, at least, survive the gales tliat prevent them 

 from growing into timber. 



The laird of Buness, the late Mr. Thomas Edmonston, informed me 

 that his place is too near the sea, and too exposed, for successful tree- 

 culture. Buness could not easily be nearer the sea, which comes up 

 to the gateway of the house, roars in at the windows, and almost 

 flings its finny produce into the kitchen, so that the cook can take 

 her choice of any kind of fish, from a sillack, a few inches long, to a 

 halibut, called turbot here, weighing a cwt. ; or, for that matter, a 

 whale, since Balta Sound, beneath the windows, has been the scene 

 of many a whale hunt, and runs red sometimes with the blood of the 

 victims. 



Dr. Samuel Edmonston, of the same island of Unst, planted trees 

 and carefully protected them, on an acre of land, also near Balta Sound ; 

 and as Unst is only eight miles long by four wide, no portion of the 

 territory can be very distant from an inlet which cuts into the 

 centre of the island. The doctor's trees, therefore, were exposed to 

 the immediate assaults of the sea spray, as well as to the damage of 

 driving blasts coming from the neighbouring hills. To these draw- 

 backs were added those of an easterly exposure and a thin soil; and, 

 under all the circumstances, it is felt in Shetland that the experiment 

 of planting has succeeded well, inasmuch as some of the trees have 



