106 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
or small clump of trees. These were chiefly deciduous, and mainly 
of the different species of the European poplar, although oak, 
elm, sycamore, ete. were frequent, swampy ground being 
occupied thickly or bordered by willows and alder. 
Proceeding by Aix-la-Chapelle, the ground surface here is more 
broken, and the banks of a rather rapid-running stream are 
covered with oak coppice, apparently treated much in the same 
manner as coppice in this country. 
The Rhine is reached at Cologne, where the land surface is 
again flat, but as we follow this grand river upwards the country 
soon gets narrowed into a deep valley worn out by the heavy 
current. From here all the way up stream by Coblentz and Bingen 
to Mayence, grape-vines, carefully cultivated for wine-making, 
occupy the ground on both sides of the deep valley, even on 
slopes so steep that they verge on the precipitous, but in such 
places retaining walls terrace the declivities and prevent land- 
slipping. The scenery is romantic—steep, projecting rocks jut 
out here and there, forming the sky-line, except where their 
summits are crowned by buildings, any one of which, we con- 
jecture, may be a fort, convent, or prison. Low down in the 
valley by the railway are hamlets, and orchards hanging with 
fiuit of great variety, while the river is laden with moving 
merchandise and passenger steamers. 
A timber raft, several hundred feet long, was being towed 
down from the upper reaches by a steam-tug, and steered by men 
who, judging from the huts erected on its surface, evidently lived 
on it. 
Beyond some clumps of very tall beech trees closely studded 
on the ground, and of no great size, I noticed no growing timber 
on this portion of the Rhine of much interest to the forester. 
After Mayence my route lay through Frankfort-on-the-Maine 
and Bamberg to Coburg, which was reached late at night, twenty- 
three and a half hours from Brussels. 
Around the ancient town of Coburg the country is hilly and 
well covered by forest. J spent the night of August 3rd at 
the Schloss Rosenau, or Castle of Roses—the birthplace of the 
great and good Prince Consort—which is situated a few miles 
from the town, and immediately south of the Thuringian range 
of mountains, famous for forests and forestry. 
In the pleasure-grounds of ‘‘ the Rosenau” are splendid speci- 
mens of trees common to Britain. J, however, saw none of very 
