64 THE FAILURES OF THE LARCH. 



reached Laurencekirk, most of the snow had melted under the in- 

 fluence of bright, warm sunshine. As we proceeded, the sun heat 

 became still more intense, and the larch leaves became more and 

 more flaccid or flagged, till on nearing Forfar and onward they 

 hung so pendant as to appear irrecoverably injured. In travelling 

 through the same and other parts of Strathmore the following 

 autumn, I found many of the larches entirely killed, and most of the 

 rest more or less injured. These effects were specially marked in 

 a fifteen to twenty year old low-lying plantation by the road side 

 between Forfar and Cortachy, which was in course of being cut 

 down, many of the trees having entirely succumbed, and among 

 the others were innumerable examples of canker or blistering which 

 only wanted more time to become transformed into the hard, 

 swollen-edged, matter-discharging sores, to which the terms, canker 

 or blistering, are applied. Again, I think in 1853, we had a cold 

 late season, with an early and severe autumn frost, which effected 

 much larch injury and destruction in the shape of blistering or 

 canker, as well as in top-rot. The last became conspicuous next 

 season in the district of Gala Water, as well as along other 

 middle tributaries of the Tweed, the lower slopes of the Lammer- 

 moors, the Moorfoot and Pentland Hills, Peebleshire, etc. 



At Prestonhall, where I then resided, many fine young Lombardy 

 poplars, of from 15 to 25 feet in height, were entirely killed, none 

 in fact escaping except such as were sheltered by plantations on 

 their northerly and easterly sides, a decided proof of the severity of 

 that early autumn frost, as well as of the unpreparedness of late- 

 maturing plants for resisting it. As before mentioned, many of 

 the larches that were only slightly injured recovered, and by cut- 

 ting up these and counting the annular layers of wood that they 

 have formed since the injury was sustained, the year in which 

 that injury was produced can be ascertained with accuracy; and 

 the dates of other like injuries in the same manner. 



In 1835 there appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Agricul- 

 ture, a paper on the native larch forests of Switzerland, by that 

 most eminent vegetable physiologist M. de Candolle of Geneva, in 

 which he mentions that although he had traversed these large 

 larch forests in different situations, he and his " numerous cor- 

 respondents can name the larch as the alpine tree which is less 

 liable to disease than any other," although " sometimes it is seen 

 having a wound or resinous cancer ; " seemingly the same as that 

 noticed under this heading. • From his paper we further learn 



