248 A HUNDRED YEARS 



pines would form my fortification against the ocean 

 blast, and, behind the protection thus afforded, I would 

 start putting in my ordinary forest trees — Scots pines, 

 silver firs, sycamores, oaks, beeches, etc. 



If I were asked what tree I have the highest opinion 

 of for hardiness and rapidity of growth on bad soil and 

 on exposed sites, I would certainly award the first prize 

 to the Corsican pine. I have seen them in their own 

 island on mountains 9,000 feet above sea-level, with 

 nothing between them and Spain or Algeria, growing to 

 an enormous size — some of those I measured there were 

 twenty feet in circumference — and here, at the same 

 age, they make nearly double the amount of timber 

 compared with Scots fir, and are proof against cattle, 

 sheep, deer, and rabbits, which no other tree is that I 

 know of. They told me in the ship-building yards at 

 Savona that old Laricio timber was as good as the best 

 Baltic redwood. 



I am ashamed to confess, but it can no longer be 

 hidden, that, among trees, many of the foreigners are far 

 and away hardier and better doers than our natives. 

 The Scots fir (as bred nowadays) is often a dreadfully 

 delicate tree when exposed to Atlantic gales. It was 

 not so in the good old times, as one finds the enormous 

 remains of Pinus sylvestris forests right out on the tops 

 of the most exposed headlands of our west coast. My 

 brother, the late Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Gairloch, 

 gave me one hundred plants of the right breed from his 

 old native fir-wood of Glasleitir, on the shores of Loch 

 Maree, which, like the rest of that good old stock at 

 Coulan, in Glen Torridon, or in those grand glens of 



