AS TIMBER TREES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 07 



or liability to have it broken over, by any bird alighting upon it.s 

 sap-surcharged stem. This is, however, in a great measure only of 

 secondary importance, for the rapidity with which the Douglas 

 fir repairs the damage is amazing ; and we do not think, unless in 

 very exposed open situations, where it is liable to receive the full 

 force of the west and south winds, which are so prevalent in Scotland, 

 that this tendency should be any detriment to its cultivation. There 

 are many other important qualifications, superior to both the Laricio 

 and Austriaca, which the Douglas fir possesses, and which will, we 

 think, tend ultimately to its being preferred by planters generally. 

 While we can hardly point to a single specimen of either of the two 

 former named pines in this country of 50 or 60 feet in height, we 

 have instances of the Douglas in many places throughout the 

 country of fully that size. At Dropmore, where one of the original 

 seedlings is luxuriating in a naturally poor soil, this noble tree has 

 already attained an altitude of over 100 feet ! In many other 

 situations both in England and in Ireland, we find it, not certainly of 

 the immense height of the famous Dropmore tree, but of large tree 

 dimensions, and in all varieties of soil, from sandy light porous earth 

 to deep heavy loam and clayey subsoil. For example, we find at 

 Charlesfort, county Meath, Ireland, one plant in a sheltered site, 

 in good soil, which in the spring of this year measured 10 feet high, 

 and 3 feet 3 inches in girth at 3 feet from the ground, and which 

 has during the past eight years increased by no less than 22| feet ! 

 It is now about twenty years of age. In the same situation the 

 Wellingtonia gigantea, now 29 feet 6 inches in height, has only 

 increased during the same period 17i feet ; and the Deodar, now 3G 

 feet high, only 14 J feet. The Wellingtonia, it should be added, is 

 4 feet in girth at 3 feet from the ground. At Balgowan, and Keillor, 

 in Perthshire, at an elevation of 600 feet above seadevel, we find 

 numerous Douglas firs. Mr Thomson, the enterprising proprietor, 

 an enthusiastic arboriculturist, plants them and the Laricio by the 

 thousand even at that elevation, and finds them invariably succeed 

 rapidly and well. The tallest specimen there is in the Keillor Pine- 

 tum, where it has attained a height of 57 feet, and a girth of 5f feet 

 at 3 feet from the ground. The soil is a good loam on gravelly sub- 

 soil ; but the situation is not unduly sheltered. It ought, however, 

 to be stated that the altitude of this tree would have been much 

 greater were it not that, ecpially with the other pines at Keillor and 

 Balgowan, it has suffered occasionally from the damage to its terminal 

 bud and shoot, by black-game and capercadzie alighting upon 



VOL. VII. PART I. e 



