OK IN MIXED PLANTATIONS. 283 



be fitly occupied by spineless underwood and shrubs, interspersed 

 with strong free growing herbaceous plants, a race far too much 

 neglected in ornamental forestry. The well-known aversion that 

 cattle and sheep have to passing over rough stony surfaces, even 

 when by no means thickly interspersed with thorny vegetation, 

 argues well in favour of this wild-fence notion ; and, if fairly tried, 

 it will doubtless be found cheap and effectual, as well as ornamental, 

 As with ordinary hedges it would, of course, require temporary 

 outside fencing. 



Returning to the suhject of Nurses. — Wherever the landscape effects 

 of group planting are intended to be early and continuous, the nurses 

 employed for sheltering the young permanent plants should be either 

 the same or of the faster growing kinds that assimilate with them in 

 general appearance, for the obvious reasons, that they give the 

 required shelter soonest, and they are the most remunerative as 

 thinnings. For example, the larch as a nurse for the larch; the 

 Scotch fir for itself and other true pines ; the common sycamore for 

 its own kind, as Avell as for others of the Acer family ; the Turkey 

 oak for others of its genus; and the ash, in addition to sheltering 

 its own relations, will make a passable nurse for the walnut and 

 others having similarly divided leaves. As a nurse for the silver fir 

 and the darker coloured spruces, the balm of Gilead or balsam fir is 

 especially suitable, from its dying out generally at from 25 to 30 

 years of age, and thus obviating the tendency that too often exists 

 among woodmen to spare trees after their presence becomes hurtful 

 to their neighbours. When the early effects of group planting are 

 not deemed paramount, the larch will prove a profitable nurse, in 

 situations not calculated for its long enduring healthy existence. 



In order to get the greatest number and value of thinnings from 

 a given space, pruning, by shortening or cutting in the side branches 

 of the nurses, so as to prevent them interfering injuriously with the 

 reserves and with one another, as well as for stimulating their upright 

 growth, is a treatment deserving of notice, which was recommended 

 so far back as 1825 by W. Billington, superintendent of planting 

 in the forest of Dean; and in 1841 by the late Gavin Cree of Biggar, 

 whose somewhat different mode has since been very successfully 

 practised on the estate of Sir John M. Nasmyth in Peeblesshire, as 

 well as on that of the Earl of Stair in Midlothian, and elsewhere. 



Applying some of the preceding remarks to near-at-hand examples 

 of avenue treatment, you will, on visiting Sir Walter Scott's monu- 

 ment, and the renowned Edinburgh Meadows, have opportunities of 



