Forest- Culture. 1 5 9 



Mr. Lauder, who says, "The larch is unquestionably the most enduring tim- 

 ber we have. It is remarkable that whilst the red-wood, or heart-wood, is 

 not formed at all in other resinous trees till they have lived a good many 

 years, the larch, on the contrary, begins to make it soon after it is planted; 

 and while you may fell a Scotch fir of thirty years old, and find no red- 

 wood in it, you can hardly cut down a young larch large enough to be a 

 walking-stick, without finding just such a proportion of red- wood, compared 

 to its diameter as a tree, as you will find in the largest larch-tree in the 

 forest. To prove the value of the larch as a timber-tree, several experi- 

 ments were made in the River Thames. Posts of equal thickness and 

 strength, some of larch and some of oak, were driven down, facing the river- 

 wall, where they were alternately covered with water by the effect of the 

 tide, and then left dry by its fall. This species of alternation is the most 

 trying of all circumstances for the endurance of timber ; and accordingly 

 the oaken posts decayed and were twice renewed in the course of a very 

 few years, while those that were made of the larch remained altogether 

 unchanged." 



Mr. Loudon, in his " Arboretum," says, " No wood remains uninjured 

 by water longer than the larch ; and, for this reason, it is in general use 

 in France and Switzerland for water-pipes. Larch is much used in Swit- 

 zerland for shingles and for vine-props. For the latter purpose, it is found 

 the most durable of all kinds of wood. The vine-props of it are never 

 taken up : they remain fixed for an indefinite number of years, see crop 

 after crop of vines spring up, bear their fruit, and perish at their feet, with- 

 out showing any symptoms of decay. In most instances, the proprietors 

 of the vineyards are perfectly ignorant of the epoch when these props were 

 first placed there : they received them in their present state from their 

 fathers, and in the same state will transmit them to their sons. Props 

 made of silver-fir, and used in the same soil, for the same purpose, will not 

 last more than ten years." 



4, Its Beauty. — While the conimon American larch has a wild, straggling 

 habit in its growth, the Tyrolese forms one of the most beautiful cone- 

 shaped trees in the world when standing alone. Its limbs project immedi- 

 ately from the tree, a very little inclining upward ; and continue to incline 

 more upward as they extend, till the whole tree is formed into an exact 



