CHAP. II. BRITISH ISLANDS.- 105 
1760. The most considerable of these, he says, was that of old 
Mr. Dickson, at Hassendeanburn, in Teviotdale. This nursery, we 
are informed by the present proprietors, Messrs. Archibald Dick- 
son and Co., was founded in 1729. ‘From it sprang, in 1767, 
the nursery of Messrs. Dickson, now Dickson and Turnbull, at 
Perth; and, subsequently, another brother of the Hassendeanburn 
family, Walter Dickson, began the house of Dickson and Co. of 
Edinburgh, now Dicksons and Shankley, in connexion with Mr. 
James Dickson, who was no relative of the family. It thus appears, 
that Mr. Robert Dickson of Hassendeanburn was the father of 
commercial forest tree nurseries in Scotland. The three nurseries 
established by him and his two brothers being still the most 
extensive in that country. Mr. Archibald Dickson, the present 
chief of the firm at Hassendeanburn and at Hawick, to whom 
we are indebted for the above information, states, in his letter of 
March 24. 1835, that he is now bringing up some of the fifth 
generation to the trade. ‘The next considerable public esta- 
blishment of this kind was that of Messrs. Anderson and Leslie 
of Broughton Park, Edinburgh; and contemporary with this 
were those of Mr. Richmond of Leith Walk, of Gordon of 
Fountainbridge, of Boutcher of Comely Bank, of Messrs. 
Austen of Glasgow, of Thomas Leslie and Co. of Dundee, 
of Reid of Aberdeen, of Sampson of Kilmarnock, and a 
number of others. The most scientific nurseryman in Scotland, 
during the 18th century, appears to have been Mr. Boutcher. 
According to an authority quoted by Sir Henry Steuart, Mr. 
Boutcher was “the honestest and most judicious nurseryman 
Scotland ever had.” He made an attempt to improve Scottish 
arboriculture about 1760; but, according to Sir Henry, he was 
‘undervalued by the ignorance of his age, and suffered to 
languish unsupported for years at Comely Garden, and to die at 
last in obscurity and indigence.” (Planter’s Guide, 2d edit. 
p- 399.) Boutcher’s Treatise on raising Forest Trees was the 
first work on the subject of its time, and Scottish nurserymen 
have only produced one work on planting superior to it ; namely, 
the edition of Nicol’s Planter’s Kalendar, which was edited, and 
in great part rewritten, by Mr. Sang of Kirkaldy. 
The indigenous trees of-Ireland are the same as those of 
Britain, though such as consider the box, the true service, and 
the common English elm, truly indigenous to England will not 
accord with this, as these trees are never found in an apparently 
wild state in Ireland. Those, on the contrary, who consider 
the Arbutus and rica mediterranea indigenous to Ireland 
find them wanting in England, and may hence consider that 
Ireland has more native trees and shrubs than this country. 
There can be very little doubt that the common yew is an in- 
digenous tree in Ireland, for trunks of it, of large dimensions, 
