62 BIRNAM WOOD 



conditions least favourable to the little mountaineers; 

 spindling sadly, most of them died, and the whole were 

 cast out on the waste heap. Two of them retained 

 enough vitality to revive in the clear, sharp air; they 

 struck their rootlets into the sandy soil ; and the Duke 

 probably had forgotten all about Mr. Menzies's gift, when, 

 one April morning, his eye fell upon a couple of dainty 

 saplings, feathered with tender green, and studded with 

 crimson bosses. Such was the haphazard introduction 

 of the larch into Great Britain. The pair of outcasts may 

 still be viewed near the west end of Dunkeld Cathedral, 

 mighty columns clothed with deeply sculptured bark, 

 towering to the height of one hundred feet, with far- 

 spreading limbs casting dappled shade upon the green- 

 sward. 



The incident above described marked a notable era in 

 British forestry. The Duke was so well pleased with the 

 grace and vigour of the foreigners that, before his death 

 in 1764, he had planted twenty square miles of his land 

 with larches. For better or for worse, an element had 

 been imported into Highland landscape which, more than 

 any other, has wrought a change upon the aspect of our 

 hillsides and glens. There are but three coniferous trees 

 indigenous to Britain, the Scots pine, the yew, and the 

 lowly juniper, all of them evergreen. The larch invasion 

 cannot be reckoned an enrichment of the native woodland, 

 because, lovely as this tree is in spring, when it puts forth 

 its exquisite foliage of malachite green, in winter a larch 

 wood is cold and bare, and the eye draws little solace 

 from the expanse of ashen yellow, which has been made 

 to replace the rich velvet mantle of Scots pine, relieved 

 by gleaming, ruddy boughs. 



