406 CONIFER.E. 



has been largely introduced in all those extensive planta- 

 tions that have been made within the last fifty or sixty 

 years in Scotland, and particularly in the highland dis- 

 tricts ; some proprietors mixing the species in equal num- 

 bers, others in the proportion of two larches to one Pine. 

 In England, also, at one period, the Pine was mostly 

 planted in masses by itself, and as the nature and quality 

 of the proper Pine soil does not appear to have been 

 understood or taken into consideration, these plantations 

 were usually limited to the poorest and most impoverished 

 soils of every description, under the supposition, we pre- 

 sume, that because this tree flourishes amidst the wild 

 heathy districts of the Scottish highlands, it must there- 

 fore succeed upon barren tracts of every description. As 

 might be expected, the progress of many of these planta- 

 tions, made upon soils unfitted to bring the tree to per- 

 fection, or any tolerable scantling, was seldom such as 

 to answer the expectations of the planter, and this, to- 

 gether with the improper uses to which the unmatured 

 timber at an early age, and when consisting entirely of 

 sap wood, was applied, brought the Scotch fir into great 

 disrepute in England ; such, indeed, was the prejudice 

 created against it towards the close of the last century, 

 that by some proprietors an indiscriminate destruction 

 of the Pine was commenced, and some writers advised 

 its utter exclusion from every soil and situation in which 

 any other tree could be made to grow. This prejudice, 

 we believe, still exists to a very considerable extent, and 

 though the Scotch fir continues to be admitted into 

 most mixed plantations in a certain proportion, it is much 

 more frequently as a nurse and protector to the oak and 

 other species, than for the timber it produces. 



The Common Pine is naturally slow in undergoing that 

 change which converts the white or sap wood, into red 



