TIMBER TREES. 41 



commanded it to be placed where all could see it as 

 a curiosity, and it remained for thirty years until 

 Nero employed it in building his vast amphitheatre. 1 



The first allusion to the larch in Britain is by 

 Parkinson, in 1629, as a rare curiosity; and in 1664, 

 Evelyn still writes of it as rare; but in 1731, Miller 

 describes it as now pretty common in English gar- 

 dens. It was about this time that it was first intro- 

 duced into Scotland, and from that period to the 

 present the Dukes of Athol have become famous for 

 their patronage of the larch. Unfortunately it is 

 subject to a disease, or rot, which baffles all culti- 

 vators either to comprehend or to cure. 



Many other trees of this order of cone-bearing trees 

 are in cultivation in this country, but chiefly as orna- 

 mental trees, such as the spruce, silver fir, cedar of 

 Lebanon, cypress, and others. 



The SCOTCH PINE 3 is common throughout the 

 north of Europe, and the only tree of the tribe which 

 is a genuine native. The leaves are in pairs, and 

 from two to three inches in length. Some of the 

 trees remaining in the old Scotch pine forests are of 

 considerable dimensions. In the Duthal forests some 

 have been measured with a girth of from six to twelve 

 feet at a foot from the ground. In the forests of 

 Abernethy are trees reputed to be from two hundred 

 to two hundred and forty years old ; and at Strathspey 

 some which are said to exceed three hundred. 



It is this tree which is represented so prominently 

 in the foreground in many of Turner's pictures, and 



1 Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 40. 2 Pinus sylvestris. 



