6 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
means follows that other trees will not grow better. Considering 
how long exotic conifers have been discussed and planted in this 
country, it is maddening to reflect how little is known of their 
value as timber and fitness for various situations. We know 
what they will do on a British lawn; we want to know what 
they will do in a British wood. In Belgium the Weymouth pine 
and common spruce are both found to be more hardy than the Scots 
pine, which now does not figure at all in the highest plantations. 
In Scotland the Sitka spruce (Picea Menzies?) and Oriental 
spruce, as well as Zsuga Albertiana, seem less checked in growth 
at high elevations than the Scots pine. Pinmus Cembra, always 
a rather slow grower, grows as fast in a poor gravel at 1400 feet 
as it does in a lowland garden. Its strong root-system, long 
life, and indifference to wind, seem to point to it as a valuable 
windbreak on exposed ridges. Its timber is not despised in 
Switzerland. Dr Augustine Henry (from whom more can be 
learnt in a few hours than from a hundred books) called my 
attention to another tree which deserves a trial. This is a 
variety of Pinus montana, an erect-growing tree with a stem 
of 60 feet, which forms immense forests in the Pyrenees at 
elevations where the Scots pine ceases to thrive. By some 
odd chance this tree has escaped notice in Britain, and it is 
hard to find even a specimen of it in our gardens. The only 
specimen I can be sure of is in the Botanic Garden at Dublin, 
where it grows as straight as a mast, and measures now about 
30 feet. But the value of this tree is appreciated by the French 
Government, which has built an establishment at Mont Louis 
for drying the seed, and employs it under the name of Pim a 
Crochets wherever high and poor ground has to be brought 
under forest. It is usually mistaken by travellers for Scots pine 
or Austrian pine, in spite of its grey bark, short, dark leaves, 
and distinct habit. No account of this tree will be found in 
English books on forestry, but it is well described in Captain 
S. E. Cook’s Sketches in Spain (1834), and some of the same 
author’s notes are quoted in Loudon’s Arboretum, 1838.1 
In the Pyrenees the timber is considered better than Scots 
pine, being somewhat slower in growth, more resinous, and 
more durable. The seventeenth-century barracks at Mont Louis 
1 The tree is described in Boppe’s 7raité de Sylviculture and other French 
works on forestry. —Hon. Ep. 
