70 COLONSAY 



and Aspen, which are naturally springing up and contending 

 for supremacy with an annual luxuriant growth of bracken. 

 The Woodbine twines over the trees, and festoons along the 

 edges of the numerous rocky gullies that cut up these slopes ; 

 and the Ivy has climbed up and formed pretty evergreens of 

 the more stunted of the forest trees. The Prickly Toothed 

 Buckler Fern grows in profusion, and the little Filmy Fern 

 is also to be seen under mossy banks. White felspathic 

 grits underlie Coille-bheag, and grey phyllites is the 

 principal rock in the vicinity of Coille-mhor, the better 

 condition of the rabbits in the latter being, no doubt, due to 

 the more grassy herbage of the phyllites on which they feed. 



Estate Plantations. The earliest planted trees now to 

 be seen in the island are a few old specimens of Ash and 

 Elm, survivors of a semicircular line of trees which marked 

 the boundary of the original mansion-house garden. These, 

 together with a clump on the southern slope of Beinn-a- 

 Sgoltaire, are believed to have been planted more than a 

 century and a half ago possibly soon after the first part 

 of the mansion-house had been built, in 1722. In his Tour 

 (1772), Pennant remarks on the vigorous growth of the trees 

 around Colonsay House. Other trees within the policies, now 

 grown to a considerable size, were planted about a century 

 ago. The first extensive planting of trees began about .eighty 

 to ninety years ago, when Cnoc Calanda, Pairc Dharaich, 

 Caolachadh, Fail-na-Muc, and Glaic-a-Chuill were, in the 

 course of years, successively planted. A number of smaller 

 plantations, including that at the Manse and Allt-Euadh in 

 Scalasaig, were planted by Lord Colonsay about fifty years ago. 



Such was their tardiness in making headway when plant- 

 ing in the island first began, that it was considered amply 

 satisfactory if the trees grew sufficiently to form good cover. 

 For the first ten years or so they made little progress, and 

 many places had to be planted over and over again. Not 



