224 LITERATURE OF SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURE. 



the auspices of such an association, never have heen observed. The 

 dissemination of such views and opinions throughout the country, 

 and especially amongst landed proprietors and their tenants and 

 foresters, has been productive of the highest good. The general views 

 of the agriculture of the various Scottish counties, with observa- 

 tions on the means for its improvement, drawn up by eminent and 

 reliable local reporters for the " Board of Agriculture and Internal 

 Improvements," which had been organised about this period, were 

 of themselves also another considerable impetus to forestry, inas- 

 much as land destined for reclamation and improvement, or reported 

 upon for amelioration, necessitated in many districts more extensive 

 planting, and attention to permanent enclosures of woodlands already 

 existing. Although more an agriculturist than an arboriculturist, 

 the proprietors of Scotland at the present day, and society at large, 

 are under a deep debt of gratitude to Sir John Sinclair, the eminent 

 founder of the Board of Agriculture, whose unwearied energy, con- 

 tinued during a long and useful career (one of his latest works * 

 being revised by his own hand, in his 80th year), induced and 

 stimulated others to forward the cause of progress and rural im- 

 provement throughout the length and breadth of the land, and to 

 elevate agriculture, and other cognate industrial rural pursuits, from 

 mere mechanical arts to the dignity of a science. 



Along with these dawning rays of better days for arboricultural 

 knowledge throughout Scotland, and as might naturally have been 

 expected from the improved state of matters thus happily inau- 

 gurated, a whole shoal of authors poured their flood of ideas to swell 

 the tide of enhanced and improved arboricultural literature. About 

 this period (the beginning of the nineteenth century), the number of 

 works which appeared upon tree-culture, and such kindred subjects, 

 was quite unprecedented ; and it would occupy more space than 

 we can afford in this cursory sketch, even to notice these pro- 

 ductions in anything like the manner which their merits deserve. 

 It must suffice that the names only of a few of the more noticeable 

 books upon arboricultural subjects are given in this paper. To 

 review the matter contained in them would swell this essay into a 

 very considerable volume. We have, first of all, the various ad- 

 mirable works of Gilpin, whose classical taste, and skill in landscape 

 effect are well known; and in several places at the present day his 

 treatment of the subject is quite apparent in the harmony and pleas- 

 ing effect produced by his labours. His essays on Picturesque Sub- 

 * Code of Agriculture, 5th ed. 1832. 



