CHAP* II. 



BRITISH ISLANDS. 



103 



house and gardens. The author of the treatise tells us that he 

 was "fond of dogs and horses, and had no manner of inclination 

 to plant, till he was obliged to form some enclosures for grazing 

 his horses, as he found the purchase of hay very expensive.'' 

 After he began, his lady, who " was a great lover of planting, 

 encouraged him to go on, and at last asked leave to go about it 

 herself." The first Marquess of Tweeddale, Lord Rankeilor, Sir 

 William Bruce, his father, and some others, he says, had planted 

 a great deal ; yet, he adds, " I will be bold to say, that planting 

 was not well understood in this country till this century began. 

 I think it was the late Earl of Mar, that first introduced the 

 wilderness way of planting amongst us; and very much improved 

 the taste of our gentlemen, who very soon followed his example." 

 (p. 3.) What the earl means by a wilderness, we afterwards 

 learn, is a plantation with straight walks cut through it, in the 

 geometrical style of landscape-gardening ; in England, a wilder- 

 ness plantation is generally understood to be one in which the 

 walks are in irregular directions. 



It does not appear, from this treatise, that the earl planted 

 many trees of foreign origin in his woods ; but, from the dimen- 

 sions of some arbor vitaes, evergreen oaks, chestnuts, &c., there 

 can be little doubt that he did not lose sight of such trees in his 

 ornamental plantations near the house. Sang, in the Planter's 

 Kalendar (2d edit. p. 551.), mentions a silver fir as having been 

 planted in Binning Wood in 1 705. This wood, he says, " re- 

 flects great honour on the memory of the lady who planted it;" 

 meaning, no doubt, the Countess of Haddington above mentioned, 

 who is said to have sold her jewels, to enable her to plant Binning 

 Wood. The holly hedges at Tyningham planted by this earl and 

 his successor are unquestionably the finest in Britain. Some 

 notices respecting these hedges are given in the London Horti- 

 cultural Society's Transactions, vol. viii., and in the Gardener's 

 Magazine, vol. ii. p. 184. There are in all 2952 yards of holly 

 hedge, in different lengths, of different heights of from 10 to 25 ft., 

 and of widths from 9 to 13 ft. : they are, with the exception of 

 one, regularly clipped every April. The largest single holly at 

 Tyningham, according to the dimensions sent us in January, 1835, 

 was 4*2 ft. high. The hedges were for the most part planted in 

 1712. Wight of Ormiston, in his General Survey of the Agri- 

 culture of Scotland, speaking of Tyningham in 1768, says, these 

 hedges, and the abundance of evergreens, give the place the 

 appearance of summer in the midst of winter. 



The great promoter of the planting of foreign trees and shrubs 

 in Scotland, according to Dr. Walker, was Archibald Duke of 

 Argyll ; unquestionably, also, as we have seen (p. 57.)? the great- 

 est promoter of this kind of planting, in England. The duke 

 communicated this taste to a number of his intimate friends. 



