THE PINE. 37 



ever, the most valuable, especially on account of the 

 quality of their timber. Once they abounded over 

 the greater part both of the continent and the islands, 

 but in the latter situations they have been exhausted 

 somewhat wantonly. Not much more than a century, 

 or a century and a half ago, there was an extensive 

 pine forest in the north of Ireland, in that elevated 

 part of the country which extends through the coun- 

 ties of Donegal and Tyrone, and separates the rivers 

 that flow to the sea on the north, from those that 

 flow south and east to Loughs Earn and Neagh. 

 Hardly a vestige of that forest now remains, nor is 

 there any very clear account of what became of it. 



In the lowlands and rich soils of Scotland there 

 perhaps never was an extensive pine forest ; but there 

 can be little doubt that upon the uplands the pine 

 was once as general as it now is in the back settle- 

 ments of Upper Canada. Of these forests many 

 vestiges still remain. The fragment which lies far- 

 thest to the south-west is that of Rannoch, on the 

 confines of the shires of Perth, Inverness and Ar- 

 gyle. The greater part of that forest has, how- 

 ever, been felled, and the timber was floated down 

 the Tummel and the Tay, for a distance of at least 

 sixty miles to Perth, from Rannoch. The roots that 

 remain bleaching on the surface, and the occasional 

 trees that are still found in sheltered situations, or in 

 situations which are not accessible, afford evidence 

 that the forest once extended eastward not only to the 

 remaining woods of Mar, at the sources of the Dee 

 and the Don, in the west part of Aberdeenshire, but 

 to the shore of the sea along that bleak ridge in the 

 northern part of the county^ of Mearns, which forms 

 the southern boundary of the valley of the Dee, and 

 in the very extensive peat moss, upon which pine is 

 the submerged timber almost exclusively found. Fur- 

 ther to the north, the pine forest appears once to have 



VOL. II. 4 



