CHAP, Il. BRITISH ISLANDS, 103 
house and gardens. The author of the treatise tells us that he 
was ‘fond of dogs and horses, and had no manner of inclination 
to plant, till he was obliged to form some enclosures for grazing 
his horses, as he found the purchase of hay very expensive.” 
After he began, his lady, who “ was a great lover of planting, 
encouraged him to go on, and at last asked leave to go about it 
herself.” The first Marquess of Tweeddale, Lord Rankeilor, Sir 
William Bruce, his father, and some others, he says, had planted 
a great deal; yet, he adds, “I will be bold to say, that planting 
was not well understood in this country till this century began. 
I think it was the late Earl of Mar, that first introduced the 
wilderness way of planting amongst us; and very much improved 
the taste of our gentlemen, who very soon followed his example.” 
(p. 3.) What the earl means by a wilderness, we afterwards 
learn, is a plantation with straight walks cut through it, in the 
»geometrical style of landscape-gardening ; in England, a wilder- 
ness plantation is generally understood to be one in which the 
walks are in irregular directions. 
It does not appear, from this treatise, that the earl planted 
many trees of foreign origin in his woods; but, from the dimen- 
sions of some arbor vitaes, evergreen oaks, chestnuts, &c., there 
can be little doubt that he did not lose sight of such trees in his 
ornamental plantations near the house. Sang, in the Planter’s 
Kalendar (2d edit. p. 551.), mentions a silver fir as having been 
planted in Binning Wood in 1705. This wood, he says, “ re- 
flects great honour on the memory of the lady who planted it ;” 
meaning, no doubt, the Countess of Haddington above mentioned, 
who is said to have sold her jewels, to enable her to plant Binning 
Wood. The holly hedges at Tyningham planted by this earl and 
his successor are unquestionably the finest in Britain. Some 
notices respecting these hedges are given in the London Horti- 
cultural Society's Transactions, vol. viil., and in the Gardener’s 
Magazine, vol. ii. p. 184. There are in all 2952 yards of holly 
hedge, in different lengths, of different heights of from 10 to 25 ft., 
and of widths from 9 to 13 ft.: they are, with the exception of 
one, regularly clipped every April. The largest single holly at 
Tyningham, according to the dimensions sent us in January, 1835, 
- was 42 ft. high. ‘The hedges were for the most part planted in 
1712. Wight of Ormiston, in his General Survey of the Agri- 
culture of Scotland, speaking of Tyningham in 1768, says, these 
hedges, and the abundance of evergreens, give the place the 
appearance of summer in the midst of winter. 
The great promoter of the planting of foreign trees and shrubs 
in Scotland, according to Dr. Walker, was Archibald Duke of 
Argyll ; unquestionably, also, as we have seen (p. 57.), the great- 
est promoter of this kind of planting, in England. The duke 
communicated this taste to a number of his intimate friends, 
