116 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
become, in the forest-tree nursery trade, as familiar to foresters 
and others as a household word. At the beginning of the Queen’s 
reign, those public nurseries for the rearing and sale of trees and 
shrubs had been established by a Dickson, or some other enter- 
prising sept, in every important business centre in Scotland. At 
Edinburgh they were numerous, and are so to this day, and they 
were also to be found at Aberdeen, Perth, Dundee, Inverness, 
Forres, Glasgow, Stirling, Kilmarnock, Ayr, Dumfries, Kelso, 
and many other places, which shows that the demand for young 
forest trees had arrived at considerable commercial importance at 
that period. 
Earty LITERATURE OF FORESTRY. 
It may be safely said that until the advent of the Victorian era 
the literature of British forestry was of a meagre character ; but 
such of it as was of any value in practical forestry was mainly the 
work of Scottish authors. Evelyn’s Sylva appeared in 1664, and 
it is still a popular book with ardent lovers of trees. The Earl of 
Haddington, in 1760, published a small Zreatise on Forest Trees, 
but it was of little use for practical purposes, and is chiefly valued 
for its rarity, and as the production of a famous planter of trees, 
A useful book, and one that was much valued in its day, was a 
Treatise on Forest Trees, by William Boutcher, a nurseryman at 
Comely Bank, near Edinburgh, published in 1772. Another 
useful treatise, The Practical Planter, by Walter Nicol, appeared 
in 1779, and a revised edition of it, by Mr Sang of Kirkcaldy, 
in 1812. Monteith’s Forester’s Guide followed in 1819, and Sir 
Henry Steuart’s Planter’s Guide in 1829, may be said to com- 
plete the list of useful books on practical forestry prior to the 
commencement of the present reign in 1837. 
Forestry APpPpLIANCES—TooLs AND IMPLEMENTS. 
The appliances at the command of the Scottisl forester in pre- 
Victorian times, for the execution of his work, were almost confined 
to the axe, saw, pick, and spade, and the various forms of those use- 
ful cutting and digging tools in vogue at the time for particular 
purposes, The means of transport were limited to the drag-chain, 
and the timber cart or waggon drawn by horses or bullocks. The 
friendly aid of the spring floods in the nearest river was invoked 
to float the timber to a seaport, often many miles distant. No lines 
of railway, light or heavy, steam cable, or electric; no traction 
