SCOTTISH GAKDENS 



to work to restore them. They were maintained and 

 greatly beautified by his successors, especially by the 

 tenth Earl, who died in 1903 at the age of 84. It 

 is to his assiduous care that the present generation 

 owes the fine collection of exotic conifers, broad- 

 leaved trees and flowering shrubs. The landscape 

 now only lacks what is held in store for generations 

 unborn the grace of aged timber to fulfil the ideal 

 of a lordly chace. 



A great part of the isthmus between the lakes is 

 devoted to a pinetum. Favoured by the mild western 

 air, the Californian Pinus insignis (or radiata, Sargent) 

 forms great domes of velvety bottle green, and the 

 feathery Monterey cypress (C. macrocarpa) grows as 

 freely beside it as both do on the Pacific sea-board 

 near San Francisco. Unluckily the gales which sweep 

 across the broad lake on the west have wrought sore 

 destruction among some of the firs. The Blue Avenue, 

 for instance, as Sir Joseph Hooker named a double 

 line of Abies nobilis on the slope facing the new 

 castle, has been sadly knocked about, and the severe 

 thinning practised in order to produce what are 

 termed specimens has had the opposite result in 

 many cases. Pines and firs are creatures of company, 

 only displaying their special character of lofty, straight 

 growth when they are disciplined as a forest. Yet 

 there are growths of great beauty in the more 

 sheltered places. The Himalayan Cupressus torulosa, 1 

 tolerant only of British climate in the mildest dis- 



1 Dr. Augustine Henry pronounces this specimen to be Dacridium Franklinii. 



80 



