14.0 On the Scotch Pine. 



gate, &c., to Manchester; whence I returned back to my own 

 sweet, sweet home in the centre of England ; " for there's no 

 place like home ! there's no place like home ! " The object 

 of my mission was to see the state of improvement in agri- 

 culture and horticulture, and particularly the management of 

 young plantations, as theoretically described by Sir Henry 

 Steuart, Mr. R. Monteath, and Sir Walter Scott, whose works 

 I had just been reading. 



I had not seen any of the country comprised in my tour for 

 above nine years, much of it I had not seen for twenty or 

 thirty years, and some parts 1 had never seen. I have col- 

 lected materials sufficient for a great number of Magazines, 

 but am such a poor hand at arranging or writing systemati- 

 cally, that, with want of time also, my letters, I fear, will 

 hardly be worth reading. I shall, however, give you an 

 account of some of the things which I have seen, or rather of 

 what I have not seen, for I have seen but few things which 

 really pleased me. I saw no such thing as two distinct species 

 or varieties of the Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris), either in 

 Scotland or England. The rough-barked and smooth-barked 

 are only occasioned by soil, situation, or age ; the broad top 

 is the effect of old age, premature old age, or disease. Every 

 Scotch pine will have a rough bark, if it has been pruned 

 and thinned out properly in its youth. I saw many ill effects 

 of not early pruning the Scotch pine ; as also many ill effects 

 from pruning after the tree was nearly at its growth. I ex- 

 amined many boards sawn from such trees ; they were full of 

 knots, 2 or 3 in. in diameter. Such knots were the only good 

 wood in them ; indeed, they had every appearance of the best 

 pitch pine of Russia; while the boards themselves were quite 

 white and frothy. Sir Walter Scott was very wrong in saying 

 that the common Scotch pine was only introduced from America 

 about half a century ago, and much inferior to the Highland 

 pine. There are, within a few miles of Abbottsford, large 

 woods of Scotch pine, which have been the rendezvous of an 

 immense heronry and rookery since long before he was born, 

 namely, Torwood Lee and Rowland, Rowhill, &c. Secondly, 

 I saw few or no pines on the lands where I wished to see 

 them, viz. on the tops of the hills. The woods in Scotland 

 are chiefly on the sides of the hills, or even on some of their 

 best lying lands ; while the bleak bare hills behind them give 

 the whole country a barren and beggarly appearance. I am 

 not so fond of hedge-row timber as some are, for I never saw 

 a tree in a hedge fit to be seen, if the hedge were fit to be seen 

 under it; but I should like to clothe eveiy horizon with a 

 belt, however narrow, of Scotch pine and larch fir. Such 



