58 History of the English Landed Interest. 



Treasurer, Godolpliin, and some steps seem from time to time 

 to have been taken in tliis direction by the Government.^ 



As edition after edition of the Sylva was published, the 

 practice of planting became general. Dr. Balfour founded the 

 Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh in the year 1680, and sites 

 were set apart for the same purpose in more than one of the 

 great towns. Stephen Switzer gave directions for the general 

 distribution of a country seat into rural and extensive gardens, 

 parks, paddocks, etc., in a work entitled Iconographia EusHca, 

 published about 1720. " Capability Brown " was busily en- 

 gaged in designs of landscape gardening on some of the 

 principal English demesnes between 1731 and 1760; and his 

 modern namesake, Mr. James Brown, quoting from Dr. "Walker's 

 Essays, tells us in his book. The Forester,^ how Lebanon cedars 

 came into Scotland about 16S3 ; how the lime was planted at 

 Tay mouth in 1664 ; the silver and spruce firs at Inverary in 

 1682 ; the black poplar at Hamilton in 1696 ; the horse-chestnut 

 at New Posso in 1709 ; the Weymouth pine atDunkeld. in 1725 ; 

 the larch at the same place in 1741 ; the English elm at 

 Dalmahoy in 1736 ; and the Norway maple at Mountstewart in 

 1738. In 1705 Thomas, Earl of Haddington, set to work, and 

 adorned his seat in East Lothian with numerous woods ; and 

 in 1733 he published a treatise, in which he asserts that up to 

 the beginning of his centurj'' his methods of arboriculture had 

 not been understood in Scotland. The same author tells us 

 that the " wilderness way of planting," with its open vistas 

 (recommended by Evelyn), had been introduced a little before 

 by the Earl of Mar ; and Mr. James Brown, from his own 

 personal observations, assures us that though most of the more 

 matured Scotch woodlands of to-day had probably been culti- 

 vated about 1730, the date of English sylviculture on the same 

 extensive scale must be fixed some fifty years later. 



It seems as though the Scotch foresters of this period were 

 devoting their chief attention to pine woods, while on the less 

 hilly lands of southern England the more profitable hard 

 woods were attended to. Almost the first object which at- 



1 20 Car. II. c. B, aud 9 and 10 Will. III. c. 3G. 

 - The Forester, James Brown, p. G, 1871. 



