422 Observations on Larch. 
by winds, and then only in single trees.. Scotch firs are bad and, 
shabby growers (with me at least), at about eight hundred feet of 
altitude. Larch grow luxuriantly some hundred feet higher. 
The late Duke of Atholl, my father, was the first who formed 
plantations around Dunkeld or Blair, to any extent (in 1765). 
The quantity of old larch I could at present spare, therefore, 
cannot be considerable ; but should the Board, from any thing. 
I have said of its curabuitys in boats, &c. &c. he ‘inclined to make 
trials for naval purposes, ! could perhaps furnish for that pur- 
pose forty or fifty load: or, I should be extremely ready and 
happy to carry into effect experiments, if the Board should think 
fit to direct the making of any, to prove the strength, weight, 
durability, &c. &c. of larch wood. 
I would not, Gentlemen, have troubled you with the foregoing 
detail, but from a thorough conyiction that larch timber may be 
used, in many instances, as a substitute for oak. 
That this substitute may be had of a prime quality in sixty or 
seventy years from the period of planting. 
And, lastly, that this substitute may be the produce of other- 
wise barren and unprofitable mountains. Whereas oak timber 
will always be found to thrive best in lands either taken, from, or 
well adapted to,, agricultural purposes, and more particularly to, 
the growth of wheat, 
The further and various trials mad by the Duke of Atholl of 
the quality and endurance of larch; the extent of plantations of 
that species of tree formed and forming on dry, and of the Pinus 
alba, or Norway spruce, on wet lands 3 ; and the surprising fer- 
tilizing quality of the leaves or spines of the. larch, which in the 
course of between twenty and thirty years convert the most bar- 
ren and rugged mountains, formerly not worth nine-pence per 
acre, into an herbage worth from ten to fifteen shillings per acre; 
—it is the intention of the Duke to put together, and make. 
known, for the general good. 
In the mean time, he ‘confines himself to the observations for- 
merly transmitted in 1807, to the commissioners for naval re- 
vision, along with two trials of the strength of larch, made in 
1812 and1818*, and the age and dimensions of the largest larch- 
tree that has been cut, or is now growing on his estates. 
* The description of the trials in 1818, here referred to, is a quotation 
from the Philosophical Magazine for March 1818 (see our fifty-first volume, 
page 214), and needs not therefore to be repeated in the present article. 
Results 
