400 CONIFERS. 



of four thousand feet, while in the colder regions of Nor- 

 way, Lapland, Sec, under 70°, it only reaches to seven 

 hundred feet above the level of the sea. Widely dispersed, 

 however, as the species is found throughout all the moun- 

 tainous regions of Europe within the limits of its appro- 

 priate zone, it is between latitudes 52° and 65° that it is 

 met with in the greatest profusion and becomes the pre- 

 vailing tree. Thus upon the extensive plains of Poland 

 and Russia it occurs in forests of immense extent, as well 

 as in Northern Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Lapland, 

 up to the 70° of north latitude, in all which countries a 

 large proportion of the surface is almost entirely occupied 

 by its dense masses, and from which almost inexhaustible 

 resources Britain, as well as other countries draw their 

 principal supply of the finest Red Pine timber. The indige- 

 nous forests of Scotland, which formerly occupied so large 

 an extent of its territory, have, within the last sixty years, 

 been greatly reduced, in consequence of the demand for 

 Pine timber, occasioned by the difficulty of obtaining wood 

 from the Baltic during the late wars; some, indeed, are 

 nearly obliterated, as that of Rannoch, which once occu- 

 pied an extensive area, but whose site in many parts is 

 only now to be traced by the decaying roots which rise 

 above the ground, or by the occasional appearance of small 

 detached groups or single trees, which escaped the de- 

 stroying axe, either from their trifling value or the pe- 

 culiar and perhaps inaccessible situations in which they 

 grew. Such, also, has been the fate of the forest of 

 Glenmore, once famous for the size and age of its timber, 

 whose magnificent pines clothed one of those romantic 

 glens or passes intervening between the mountain mass 

 of Cairngorum and the river Spey, and which once formed 

 a continuation of that of Rothiemurchus. This noble 



