Reviews of Books. 121 



exterminafciou will never be attempted, and we may safely prophesy that 

 if tried it will prove a failure. 



Next follows a most instructive paper " On the Taxodhm Sempervirens 

 for Timber Purposes," by Kobert Hutchison, of Carlo wrie, Kirkliston, who 

 holds a high opinion of this tree, the Californian redwood, as being likely 

 to speedily produce a large quantity of excellent timber when properly 

 cultivated in suitable localities in this country. He observes, " It may 

 be suggested that for the successful rearing of Saxodiiim Temper virens, 

 and such other descriptions of the coniferous family as are liable to be 

 injured by late spring frosts in this country, and especially for such as are 

 prone to throw out their wood growths early in the season, liome nursery 

 seedlings, reared in the soil, and about the altitude of the climate in which 

 they are ultimately to grow, are far more certain of success, and appear to 

 be hardier in constitution for the site, than transplanted seedlings bought 

 and sent from a distance, and probably from a very different position. It 

 is to treatment of this description that the marvellous achievements of the 

 late Mr. Humphrey Graham, of Belstane, in successfully rearing to timber 

 size almost every species of the newer Coniferai in the poor bleak soil of 

 the top of the Pentland Hills, in Mid Lothian, are to be attributed; 

 and were more care shown to this branch of arboriculture, namely, 

 to the growing of plants from good seed in a small nursery on the estate 

 which they are intended to adorn, there would be fewer records of failure 

 in early years of several of the varieties. " 



It is the same law, which is so well known in the agricultural world, 

 that operates in the arboricultural field in this particular branch of nature's 

 economy. In high districts where the climate is cold and the summers 

 are short we find the crops shorter and later, and field operations of all 

 kinds carried on long after similar work is completed in the lower and 

 earlier districts ; and so it is with the seedling trees of such sites. The 

 operations of growth are retarded, and nature is, as it were, by slow de- 

 grees in the earlier years of the plant, made to alter her period of shooting 

 into annual a-jtivity to a latter date, so as to accommodate the life and 

 functions of the seedling to the new condition in its adopted sphere ; and 

 as "hahit becomss a second nature," the seedling conifer sprouted and 

 grown from its infancy under circumstances of climate somewhat uncon- 

 genial to its nature in its own habitats, becomes an altered variety in con- 

 stitution, and acquires the ability to withstand the vicissitudes of temper- 

 ature and exposure, which it would not acquire in its own country, or 

 even in lower and more sheltered positions in Britain. Statistics are 

 given of over sixty of the largest specimens of taxodium in Britain ; the 

 highest in Eugland, at Strathfieldsaye, Hants, being 6i feet by 6 feet 

 2 inches in circumference of stem at 3 feet from the ground, followed 

 closely by another very handsome tree at Longleat, Wilts, which is 63 

 feet high and 8 feet in circumference of stem at 3 feet from the ground. 

 The highest in Scotland is at Rossie Priory, Perthshire, "a most beautiful 

 plant feathered to the ground," 50 feet 3 inches high, by 7 feet 10 inches 

 in circumference of stem, at 3 feet up. Many others in both countries 

 VOL. T. K 



