CHAPTEE XXI. 



EXAGGERATIONS ABOUT LARCH. 



The larch, like everything of importance, has under- 

 gone many criticisms, some favourable, others un- 

 favourable ; some extolling it, others condemning it ; 

 some showing it as adapted to and fit for almost 

 everything, others pointing out its uselessness and 

 unfitness for almost anything. Like fashions in other 

 things, the fashion in larch has changed ; at one 

 period its praises were loudly sung, at another it was 

 decried and denounced. At one period the cry is, 

 " Plant larch, and nothing but larch ; " the next, " Do 

 not plant it at all, unless to bring disappointment and 

 ruin to the proprietor." 



" Nothing," say the oracles of one period, " pays so 

 well as larch." "Nothing," sounds the trumpet of 

 another, " is so utterly ruinous as the foreign intruder." 

 Would-be prophets, too, have prophesied regarding it, 

 one predicting its universal adaptation as the tree of 

 all others to plant on all lands, good, bad, and indif- 

 ferent ; another uttering a warning voice against plant- 

 ing it at all, and predicting its extinction as soon to 

 be an established fact. In the " Eural Cyclopaedia," 



