AS TIMBER TREES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 55 



value of the timber, by its being less knotty and of better texture. 

 In general appearance when young, the P. Laricio somewhat 

 resembles the Scots fir of the old Strathspey indigenous type, but 

 it is more open and longer between the tiers of branchlets. Its 

 value as timber is not so superior when the tree is young, for thin- 

 nings of Laricio are found to be soft, and less durable than larch, but. 

 when old it is reported to be remarkable for its toughness, and it is 

 strongly impregnated with resinous sap. Numerous groups and 

 specimens of the Laricio 40 feet in height exist in various parts of 

 the country; and in Perthshire, at 600 feet elevation, in a loamy soil 

 and gravelly subsoil, it proves itself equal to any indigenous fir, 

 resisting alike the gale and winter's storm, and rapidly shooting above 

 contemporary trees of Scots fir, larch, and austriaca. It may indeed 

 be described as a tree consisting of the hole of larch, with the lateral 

 branchlets and foliage of Scots fir. 



One qualification of considerable importance possessed by the 

 P. Laricio should not be overlooked — namely, its distastefulness in 

 its young state to hares and rabbits. Without positively assert- 

 ing that ground vermin will absolutely shun the young Laricio, if 

 mixed with other conifers in a plantation, it may be safely asserted 

 that they will nibble away everything else before they will touch it. 

 An experiment to test this was made some years ago at Tortworth 

 Court in Gloucestershire, where Lord Ducie, of whose interest in 

 arboricultural matters this Society is well aware, planted a young 

 Laricio in the centre of a rabbit-warren, and which, until the 

 ground was quite covered with snow, the teeming population of the 

 spot did not touch ; and even then, when starving, and naturally 

 less capricious in their bill of fare — after an attempt to consume 

 the young needles of the buds — they abandoned the experiment, 

 and sought some less bitter and astringently resinous food. In 

 like manner, Pinus Laricio is less liable than any other pine to 

 suffer from the ravages of insects or such like enemies, which 

 infest and disfigure many of the coniferous family. Although we 

 have said that the Laricio exhibits a preference for a deep, good 

 soil, it thrives in almost any other description, if we except soft, 

 spongy, and undrained marshy ground. Being of a deep tap-rooted 

 habit, in such a situation the spongioles of the main radicle get 

 chilled and water-logged, and hence the tree will not succeed. 

 Throughout the country it has within the last thirty years been 

 freely planted in all sorts of soils and elevations, and has been 

 proved to be perfectly hardy, and altogether such a variety as ought 



