122 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



or four hours in warm water before the taking, to soak out 

 their sharpnesse and oylinesse." A very good way, we 

 fancy, to save these for any connoisseur who preferred them 

 would be to place a dish of greengages or grapes by them 

 as a counter-attraction. 



LARCH (Larix Europ-€a) 



Another very common cone-bearer is the Larch, Larix 

 europisa, not an indigenous tree at all, having been 

 only introduced into England somewhere about 1620. 

 Parkinson, in 1629, mentions it as rare and nursed up 

 with a few, and those only lovers of variety, but now more 

 extensively planted than perhaps any other. It flourishes 

 best on high ground, being found in the Alps, Apennines,, 

 and other European mountain regions up to an altitude 

 of some five thousand feet, and it will in the Scottish 

 Highlands do well a thousand feet higher than even the 

 Scotch fir will thrive at. 



In the year 1727 the then Duke of Atholl received a 

 consignment of young orange and other plants from Italy, 

 and amongst them some larch. All were put into a hothouse, 

 but the young larches did so badly under this treatment 

 that they were presently thrown out on to the rubbish 

 heap. Here they quickly revived, grew rapidly, throve 

 vigorously,* and attracted attention, the outcome being that 

 as Duke succeeded Duke, each added to the ancestral 

 woods, so that by 1830 over fourteen millions of larches 

 had been planted. 1,102,367 were planted in the Spring 



' In the Atholl woods, nine hundred feet above the sea some Scotch pines 

 that had been planted forty years were six feet high, and some larches 

 that had been planted amongst them ten years later were fifty feet high. 



