ON REMAINS OF INDIGENOUS WOOD IN ORKNEY. 181 
their place. The earlier attempts at planting seem to have failed 
partly from the places selected for trial being too exposed, but chiefly 
from the trees not having been planted in sufficient numbers to shelter 
each other. Recent experiments in favourable situations, and where a 
sufficient breadth has been planted, show a more encouraging result, 
Al A 1 • O © * 
the trees being at present from twenty to twenty-five feet high ; and, 
from their healthy appearance, there is every reason to expect that they 
will continue to increase in size. 
In the town of Kirkwall and its neighbourhood, where houses afford 
shelter, trees readily attain a height of thirty-five and forty feet, and, 
by their numbers, add not a little to the picturesque appearance of the 
place; so much so, that not very long ago the Prince of Orange, who 
had been on a visit to Iceland or the Faroe Islands, and on his return 
touched at Kirkwall, remarked, much to the surprise and gratification 
of his hearers, that it was delightful to get back to a well-wooded 
country once more. The species of trees that seem to thrive best are 
the Sycamore or Scotch Plane, the Elm, the Ash, the Mountain Ash, and 
the W hite Poplar. Larch may succeed tolerably well in sheltered spots, 
hut evergreen Firs and Pines in general do not appear suitable. A re- 
markable exception to this is the Arancaria imhricata, which, so far 
as it has yet been tried, seems likely to stand the climate, as it is there 
exempt from the severe frosts that are so apt to injure it in England 
ft nd Scotland. Evergreen shrubs, as a rule, are grown with difficulty, 
a nd, from a strange anomaly in the climate, those kinds commonly 
esteemed hardy are often the most difficult to rear, and vice versa. 
Thus, while the Laurel refuses to grow, Rhododendrons are more tract- 
ate ; common Box can hardly be kept alive, yet the Box Myrtle, or 
Veronica decussata, which at Edinburgh is treated as a greenhouse 
plant, grows out-of-doors there in great luxuriance, retaining its vivid 
^eeii throughout the winter, and in spring producing a profusion of 
Vagrant white blossoms. This beautiful shrub, which in Orkney grows 
to the height of five or six feet, is a native of the Falkland Islands 
and the extreme south of South America, and there is little doubt 
^at other plants from that locality might be introduced into these 
elands with a fair chance of success. 
The remarkable mildness of winter in so high a latitude as 59° north 
,s ^iefly attributable to the influence of the Gulf Stream, which per- 
Ce Ptibly raises the temperature of the sea, and frequently casts upon 
