DECIDUOUS ORNAMENTAL TREES. 213 



planting a moor with Larches then, is, that when the trees 

 liave grown so much as to exchide the air and moisture on 

 the surface, the heath is soon exterminated ; and the soil 

 gradually increasing by the decomposition of the leaflets an- 

 nually thrown down by the Larches, grass begins to grow as 

 the trees rise in elevation, so as to allow greater freedom for 

 the circulation of the air below, — and thus, land which was 

 not worth one shilling an acre, becomes most valuable pas- 

 ture ; and we can say that our own experience amply bears 

 out the fact. The Duke of Athol found that the value of the 

 pasture in oak copses, was worth five or six shillings (ster- 

 ling,) per acre, for eight years only, in twenty-four, when the 

 copse is cut down again. Under a Scotch fir plantation it is 

 not worth sixpence more per acre, than it was before it was 

 planted ; under Beech and Spruce, it is worth less than it 

 was before. But under Larch, where the ground was not 

 worth one shilling per acre, before it was planted, the pasture 

 becomes worth from eiofht to ten shillings an acre, after the 

 first thirty years, when all the thinnings have been completed, 

 and the trees left for naval purposes, at the rate of four hun- 

 dred to the acre, and twelve feet apart. 



The Larch is a very quick grower. Between ] 740, and 

 1744, eleven trees were planted at Blair, the girths of which, 

 at growths from seventy-three to seventy-six years, ranged 

 from eiffht feet two inches, to ten feet. This lot was calcula- 

 ted to average one hundred feet each, in the whole, one thou- 

 sand two hundred feet. The total measurement of this lot 

 of twenty-two trees, therefore, is two thousand six hundred 

 and forty-five feet, which at the moderate value of two shil- 

 lings per foot, would give the sum of £264, 10s. ($1174) for 

 twenty-two Larch trees, of something under eighty years old. 

 We find by the Duke of Athol's tables of m.easurement, that 

 trees plantsd by him in 1743, were nine feet three inches in 

 circumference, when measured at four feet from the ground, 

 in 1795. 



The plantations of Larch made by Duke James of Athol, 

 between 1 733 and 1759, amounted to one thousand nine hun- 



