June i, 191 i] 



NATURE 



447 



and, lastly, we believe that considerations of sim- 

 plicity render it desirable to replace trilinear by areal 

 coordinates. To avoid overburdening the memory it 

 is advisable to restrict the student at first to one 

 or other of these systems, and in this case we have 

 little doubt that areals should be regarded as the 

 primary system. These are, however, scarcely more 

 than mere matters of detail, and it is not difficult for 

 the teacher to supply the remedy, if he feels it is 

 needed. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 



The Forest of Auchnacarry. 



Botanists and many others will be very sorry to hear 

 that a large part of what remains of the old forest of 

 Scots firs at Auchnacarry has been sold to the timber 

 merchant, and that the whole of it is likely to be felled 

 ere long. The forest lies in the west of Inverness-shire, 

 near Loch Askaig, on the first, or one of the first, of the 

 glens that run westward from the Caledonian Canal, just 

 north of Fort William. It is on the great estate, and 

 near to the mansion house, of Cameron of Lochiel. While 

 not so old as, for instance, the historic trees of the New 

 Forest, or as that strange grove of oaks at Wistman's 

 Wood, the Scots firs at Auchnacarry are of deep interest 

 and value as perhaps the largest and finest fragment that 

 is left to us of " primzeval forest," neither planted nor 

 tended by the hand of man. Its area is about 1500 

 acres, and the trees are of immense size, being mostlv 

 from 200 to 300 years old; the largest have a circumferenc - 

 of about 18 feet at 5 feet from the ground, and the 

 dimensions of a very large number are said to be little 

 less. The scenery of the forest is of great beauty, marking 

 the difference that exists between the natural look of self- 

 grown timber and the stiff, unvaried lines of an artificial 

 plantation. In England we think of the Scots fir as an 

 uninteresting, and even unsightly, tree, unpleasing in colour 

 and often cumbering the ground (as in parts of the New 

 Forest) to the exclusion of more picturesque trees. It is 

 usually planted, as Gilpin said in his " Forest Scenery," 

 " in thick array, which suffocates or cramps them, and if 

 they ever get loose from their bondage they are already 

 ruined." Very different from this description are the 

 beautiful glades at Auchnacarry, where (to borrow words 

 from Sir T. Dick Lauder), " We have seen it towering 

 at full majesty in the midst of some appropriate Highland 

 scene, and sending its limbs abroad with all the uncon- 

 strained freedom of a hardy mountaineer, as if it claimed 

 dominion over the savage regions around it." And, to 

 quote Gilpin once again : — " When I speak of the Scots 

 fir as a beautiful individual, I conceive it when it has 

 outgrown ail the improprieties of its youth ; wlv>n it hns 

 completed its full age, and when, like Ezekiil's ri d.ir, ii 

 has formed its head among the thick branches. " 



The forest of Auchnacarry is, save for a few isolated 

 trees or small surviving clumps, all that we know to re- 

 main of the great forest of Scots fir that once spread over 

 ail suitable ground in central Scotland from Hon Nevis to 

 the Spey. There was immense and wholesale destruction 

 of these forests in the latter years of the eighteenth and 

 earlier years of the nineteenth century, owing to the needs 

 of the shipbuilder and to the high price of Baltic timber 

 during the Napoleonic Wars. It was then, for instance, 

 that the great forest of Rannoch was cut down, which, 

 from the borders of Argyll, Perth, and Invernoss, stretched 

 far and wide across the country to link with the forests 

 of the Spey, the Findhorn, and the Bcauly, as well as with 

 those of the " Great Caledonian Glen." The forest of 

 Glenmore on the Spey was purchased of the Duke of 

 Gordon by a Hull timber merchant in 1783, and out of it 

 he built and launched at the mouth of the Spey " foi ' 

 seven sail of ships, of upwards of lo.ooo tons burden, 

 1,1,-rfnst of thriTi of lOi^o tons." A plank from tlii'-- ■' 



xn. 2t;o, vol. 86] 



felling is, or was, preserved at Gordon Castle, 6 feet long 

 by 5 feet 5 inches broad. In the early part of last century 

 there still remained large portions of the forest of Rothie- 

 murchus, where for many years together a great income 

 was yielded by the timber, sometimes, ^it is said, more 

 than 20,000/. a year. There were also grfeat stretches left 

 of Lord Seafield's forests of Abernethy and Duthel, though 

 a great part of the former had been destroyed by fire just 

 after the rebellion of 1745. But in these and others the 

 axe was already busy, and nowadays, though here and 

 there a few ancient trees remain, the present writer knows 

 of nothing that is left to us so noble and so extensive, so 



Scots Firs at Auchnacarry. 1 



worthy of preservation as a relic of an older Scotland, as 

 this doomed forest of Lochiel's at Auchnacarry. There is 

 much ado when a great picture leaves the country ; but to 

 the naturalist and to all tree-lovers the destruction of this 

 ancient forest will seem a greater loss, greater because 

 the object is unique and the loss irreparable. 



D. W. T. 



The End of the Beui^k. 



Dr. Watase, professor of zoology in the College of 

 Science of this University, has directed my attention to a 

 letter on this subject in your issue of December 9, 1909. 

 In view of the Darwin centenary celebrations of the year 

 before last, and wishing to be fully assured of whatever 

 facts were known regarding Darwin's Beagle, Dr. Watase 

 got me to write to my old friend Mr. N. E. Smith, C.B., 

 of the Comptroller's Department, Admiralty, Whitehall. 

 The reputed tonnage (B.O.M.) of the vessel bought by 

 Japan was known to be 523 ; her length and breadth were 

 variously «tatcd as 150 feet by 25 feet 6 inches and 160 feet 

 by 26 feet. Mr. Smith very kindly traced the following 

 notes with regard to Darwin's Beagle and to a subsequent 

 vessel of the same name. His conclusion is that the Beagle 

 bought by Japan was not Darwin's, but the later vessel. 

 His letter is as follows: — 



" The Beagle in which Darwin made the voyage round 

 til., world was a lo-gun brig-sloop buiU -i*^ Woolwich in 



I or this pho'ograph we are indebted to ihe 

 i7( Agrictildiri^l. 



.1" the North 



