LARCH PLANTING IN EARLY DAYS 135 



stated, in 1774 put into 15,000 acres of his ducal soil 

 more than 27,000,000 Larch trees, and put them 

 into 15,000 acres of ground, moreover, that had 

 previously lain waste. What a relief from that 

 nightmare vision of the 3'ellow-coloured paper that 

 so mutely, surely tells its yearly tale of ever-growing 

 demand notes and insatiable tax-gatherers must it 

 have been to the lineal inheritors of those broad 

 acres when their eyes removed and rested upon the 

 green of those long stretches of w^ell-grow^n Larches 

 fringing those hills from whence was to come their 

 help ! 



Let, then, all croakers and blind worshippers of 

 the Eternal Yesterday, who deprecate and have 

 deprecated the introduction of new trees from 

 distant lands, ponder on this little venture, under- 

 taken once upon a time long ago in the shape of the 

 importation of a new tree at Dunkeld, planted in 

 1738 by James, 3rd Duke of Atholl, at a time when 

 the Larch was still a stranger in our land, and looked 

 upon as an alien with a questionable past and with 

 a future of doubtful utility. 



The history of the Larch contains a long Black List 

 of those enemy hosts that assail tree life. They have 

 been stricken more than their share with the plague 

 of pests, and afflicted with the curse of canker from 

 within and without, at one time so much so that their 

 very prestige was shaken. Beetles, the larvse of 

 many moths, woolly-white aphides, have been reck- 

 oned among their foes, and prepared the way for 

 the more subtle influence of fungus organisms to 

 complete a ruin. 



As trees of great importance, they have in conse- 

 quence made themselves conspicuous before the 

 footlights of the botanical, zoological, and mycological 

 world. The learned attention of savants — and not in 

 vain — has been directed upon the life-history of the 



