36 FOREST LIFE AND FOREST TREES. 



juniper, and long heath, required no artificial clearing. An im- 

 proved mode of planting was employed here, that of using young 

 plants only, two or three years' seedlings, put into the ground by 

 means of an instrument invented by the duke instead of the com- 

 mon spade. 



" In 1824, the growth of the Larch in this last tract, called Loch 

 Ordie Forest, having greatly exceeded the sanguine hopes and 

 expectations of the duke, he determined on adding to it an ex- 

 tensive adjoining tract, consisting of two thousand two hundred 

 and thirty-one Scotch acres, denominated Loch Hoishnie. The 

 preparations of fencing, clearing (where that was necessary), mak- 

 ing roads, and procuring plants from different nurserymen, occu- 

 pied the time till October, 1825, when the planting commenced, 

 and was carried on in such good earnest that the whole was fin- 

 ished by December, 1826. 



" The planting of this forest appears to have terminated the 

 labors of the duke in planting. He and his predecessors had 

 planted more than fourteen millions of Larch plants, occupying 

 over ten thousand English acres. It has been estimated that 

 the whole forest on mountain ground, planted entirely with Larch, 

 about six thousand five hundred Scotch acres, will, in seventy- 

 two years from the time of planting, be a forest of timber fit for 

 building the largest ships. Before being cut down for this pur- 

 pose, it will have been thinned to about four hundred trees to an 

 acre. Supposing each tree to yield fifty cubic feet of timber, its 

 value, at a shilling a foot (one half the present value), will give 

 £1000 an acre, or, in all, a sum of £6,500,000 sterling."^ 



* Reports on Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts. 



