272 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



growing abroad, and the peculiar capacity of the Larch foi 

 thriving on poor soils, we shall make some extracts from 

 the account given of its growth in Scotland, by Sir T. 1) 

 Lauder. 



The late Duke of Athol planted large districts with this 

 tree, and thereby converted the heathy wastes into valuable 

 forests ; but this was not the whole of the improvement he 

 thus created. The Larch being a deciduous tree, sheds 

 upon the earth so great a shower of decayed spines every 

 succeeding autumn, that the annual addition which is made 

 to the soil cannot be less than from a third of an inch to 

 half an inch, according to the magnitude of the trees. This 

 we have had opportunities of proving by our remarks made 

 on the surfaces of newly cleaned pleasure walks. The 

 result qf planting a moor with Larches then, is, that when 

 the trees have grown so much as to exclude the air and 

 moisture from the surface, the heath is soon exterminated ; 

 and the soil gradually increasing by the decomposition of 

 the leaflets annually thrown down by the Larches, grass 

 begins to grow as the trees rise in elevation, so as to allow 

 greater freedom for the circulation of the air below, — and 

 thus, land which was not worth one shilling an acre be- 

 comes most valuable pasture ; and we can say that our 

 own experience amply bears out the fact. The Duke of 

 Athol found that the value of the pasture in oak copses 

 was worth five or six shillings (sterling) per acre for eight 

 years only in twenty-four, when the copse is cut down 

 again. Under a Scotch fir plantation it is not worth six- 

 pence more per acre than it was before it was planted ; 

 under Beech and Spruce, it is worth less than it was before. 

 But under Larch, where the ground was not worth one shil- 

 ling per acre, befor'^ it was planted, the pasture becomes 



