LAIICH TIE. 25 



The railways have given a new demand for 

 larch timber, as sleepers, which have super- 

 seded stone blocks for the rails to rest upon. 

 The principal, I may say only supply of 

 which has been obtained from any of our 

 localities, is from the Taxal plantations, out 

 of which many thousands have been supplied 

 to various railway contractors, and in one in- 

 stance ten thousand of these have fetched 

 one pound a tree, to be cut in proper lengths 

 as sleepers. Many thousands more still re- 

 main in the same plantations, which are the 

 only supplies of larch I know of on our side 

 of the backbone of England. 



Large quantities of it, I am well aware, 

 have been brought out of Yorkshire for rail- 

 way sleepers and for colliery post-wood, and 

 a still large, if not inexhaustible, supply of it 

 may yet be relied on for some years to come 

 from the estates of Sir John V. Johnstone, 

 Bart., and other landed proprietors in that 

 county. But with the exception of Mr. Jod- 



