2164- 



ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. 



PART 111. 



20 -Ji 



and the Vosges. In Spain it is found, but not in great aliundance ; except 

 in the form of the P. unciuata of Captain S. E. Cook, which we beHeve to 

 be only a mountain variety of this tree. In Britain, P. sylvestris is indi- 

 genous to the mountainous districts of Scotland ; but it appears not to be so 

 to England, though this may probably have been the case at some distant 

 period; as Mr. Winch states that the roots and trunks of very large pines 

 are seen protruding from the black peat moss, at an elevation of nearly 3000 ft. 

 in Yorkshire and Lancashire; cones are also frequently dug up out of the peat 

 bogs, particularly in the latter county. (Seep. 21.) In Scotland, it grows 

 at the height of 2700ft. on the Grampian Mountains; at the height of 

 2300ft. on Ben-na-Buird, in Aberdeenshire; and as high, or higher, on the 

 mountains near Loch-na-Garr. {Watxun.) 



In all these various situations, the Scotch pine is always found on soils dry, 

 sandy, gravelly, granitic, or argillaceous, but least frequently on such as are 

 calcareous. The largest trees and finest timber in the Highlands of Scotland 

 are found on light hazelly loam ; on a cold, but dry, subsoil, generally granitic 

 rock. The roots of the tree, in indigenous forests, run along the surface, and 

 even rise above it ; and the tree seems to derive a great part of its nourish- 

 ment from the black vegetable mould formed by the decay of its own leaves. 

 The wind frequently carries the seeds of this tree to marshy surfaces and 

 peat bogs ; but there, as Sir Thomas Dick Lauder obsei-ves, it is always 

 stunted in growth, and soon sickens and dies. In the higher parts of Aber- 

 deenshire, in the vicinity of the Dee and the Spey, where the surface is the 

 most elevated of any land in Scotland, it is only in the valleys, on the borders 

 of these rivers, and in the smaller vales on the banks of tributary torrents, 

 consisting of alluvial soil, in the gentle slopes at the bottoms of the hills, or 

 in the elevated recesses of the mountains, that the native pine thrives, and 

 becomes valuable timber. (Grant of Alonymusk in Pontei/'s Forest Primer, 

 ed. 3., p. 60.) The soil of the Forest of Braemar is a light gravel, formed of 



