196 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



plant, and therefore put to every servile 

 office. If you wish to skreen your house from 

 the south-west wind, plant Scotch firs, and 

 plant them close and thick. If you want 

 to shelter a nursery of young trees, plant 

 Scotch firs ; and, the phrase is, you may 

 afterwards weed them out, as you please. 

 This is ignominious. I wish not to rob 

 society of these hardy services from the 

 Scotch fir ; nor do I mean to set it in com- 

 petition with many of the trees of the forest, 

 which in their infant state it is accustomed 

 to shelter : all I mean is to rescue it from 

 the disgrace of being thought fit for nothinoj 

 else, and to establish its character as a pic- 

 turesque tree. For myself, I admire its 

 foliage, both the colour of the leaf and its 

 mode of growth. Its ramification, too, is 

 irregular and beautiful, and not unlike that 

 of the stone pine, which it resembles also 

 in the easy sweep of its stem, and likewise 

 in the colour of the bark, which is com- 

 monly, as it attains age, of a rich reddish 

 brown. The Scotch fir, indeed, in its strip- 

 ling state, is less an object of beauty. Its 

 pointed and spiry shoots, during the first 

 3^ears of its growth, are formal ; and yet I 



