ioo TREE-PLANTING. 



wastes in Surrey even, there are now growing 

 flourishing fir plantations, which have greatly added to 

 the beauty of certain localities, as well as bestowing a 

 great additional value to the estates upon which they 

 have been planted. A very large trade is carried on 

 in pine timber, and in ship-building the Scotch pine 

 and larch occupy a very important position, the tree 

 which produces the longest masts being the Scotch 

 pine, to which MacCulloch in his "Dictionary of Com- 

 merce," refers. Speaking of the mast trade, he says : 

 " The burghers of Riga send persons who are called 

 mast-brokers into the provinces to mark the trees, 

 which are purchased standing. They grow mostly in 

 the districts which border on the Dnieper, and are 

 sent up that river to a landing-place, whence they are 

 transported thirty versts (about twenty-three English 

 miles), to the Dwina ; where being formed into rafts 

 of from fifty to a hundred pieces each, they descend 

 the stream to Riga. The tree which produces the 

 longest masts is the Scotch pine. The pieces, which are 

 from eighteen to twenty-five inches in diameter, are 

 called masts ; and those under these dimensions, 

 spars, or in England, Norway masts, because Norway 

 exports no trees of more than eighteen inches in 

 diameter. Great skill is required in distinguishing 

 those masts which are sound from those which are 

 in the least internally decayed. They are usually 

 from seventy feet to eighty feet in height." 



The species of trees suited to poor soils in elevated 

 districts are the Scotch pine, pineaster, larch, spruce, 

 silver fir, and cedar. 



In Britain the Scotch pine and larch are considered 

 first in rank, after which follows spruce, and then sue- 



