CHAP. CXIII. CONl'FKRiE. L\ UIX. 2363 



" There is no name that stands so high, and so deservedly high, in the list of 

 successful planters, as that of the late John Duke of Athol. His Grace planted, 

 in the last years of his life, 6300 Scotch acres of mountain ground solely with 

 the larch, which, in the course of seventy-two years from the time of planting, 

 will be a forest of timber fit for the building of the largest class of ships in His 

 Majesty's navy. Before it is cut down Tor this purpose, it will have been 

 thinned out to about 400 trees per acre. Each tree will contain at the least 

 50 cubic feet, or one load of timber ; which, at the low price of one shilling 

 per cubic foot (only one half of its present value), will give 1000/. per acre ; 

 or, in all, a sum of 6,300,000/. sterling. Besides this, there will have been 

 a return of 71. per acre from the thinnings, after deducting all expense of 

 thinning, and the original outlay of planting. Further still, the /««</ on which 

 the larch is planted is not worth above from 9d. to Is. per acre. After the 

 thinnings of the first thirty years, the larch will make it worth at least 10s. 

 an acre, by the improvement of the pasturage, upon which cattle can be kept 

 summer and winter." 



On this passage Mr. Gorrie remarks : — " The prospective value of the timber 

 and improved pasturage, as here stated, will seldom be realised, even on the 

 best mountains or moorlands in Scotland ; but larch is certainly by far the 

 best improver of heath or moor pasturage yet known in this country. To 

 effect such improvement in little time, the plants should at first stand so close 

 as to choke the heath and coarser grasses ; when this is accomplished, as 

 may be done in from 10 to 13 years, gradual thinning will be followed by the 

 i^'estuca ovina and duriuscula, Cynosiirus cristiitus, ^grostis vulgaris, Poa 

 compressa, &c. &c., with the fohage possessing a softness and luxuriance 

 not acquired in open situations. Seeds of the Poa nemoralis, scattered over 

 the ground after removing the first thinnings, would wonderfully improve the 

 pasture." 



About the year 1777, Dr. Anderson, under the name of Agricola, strongly 

 recommended the larch as a timber tree ; and, in consequence of the popularity 

 of his writings, the tree began, before the end of the last century, to be planted 

 in the north as much as, or more extensively than, the Scotch pine, which 

 had till then been the principal tree planted in Scotland. One of the greatest 

 planters, at this time, in Scotland, was the Earl of Fife, as may be seen by the 

 various letters written by His Lordship respecting his plantations, in the early 

 volumes of the Transactions of the Society of Arts ; and he also planted a great 

 many larches. At the present time, as Sir Thomas Dick Lauder has remarked, 

 Scotland is preeminently the country for the larch ; and at Dunkeld, Blair, 

 Monzie, and Gartmore, in Perthshire; at Alloa, in Stirlingshire ; at Panmure 

 and Brechin Castle, in Forfarshire; at Cullen House (Lord Fife's), in Banff- 

 shire ; at Gordon Castle, Ferness, and Tarnawa, in Morayshire ; at Balhn- 

 dalloch, in Inverness-shire ; at Dalwick, in Peeblesshire, and at many other 

 places in Scotland ; larches are to be found which have all the boldness of 

 character of the tree in its native Alps. 



Early in the present century, the larch, both in England and Scotland, was, 

 in many places, attacked in its foliage by a white woolly aphis, connuonly 

 known as the J^phis laricis ; and, from 1820 to the present time, it has been 

 found that, when larches have grown on certain soils, the wood is apt to 

 decay, and become hollow at the heart ; a disease which, in Scotland, is called 

 pumping, from the trunks of trees affected by it conveying the idea from their 

 hollowness, of their being fit for pumps, or pipes for conveying water under 

 ground. The insects have long since disappeared ; but the decay of the timber 

 at the heart continues, and has led to much more attention being paid to the 

 soil in which the tree is planted ; the disease having rendered it evident that 

 the larch is, perhaps, more powerfully affected by soil and situation than any 

 other timber tree. In order to ascertain how far the effect of change of seed 

 might prevent this disease, the Highland Society of Scotland have offered pre- 

 miums for the greatest (juantity of seed imported from the native larch forests 

 of Switzerland and the Tyrol ; and many trees, raised from seeds so importetl 



