WEYMOUTH PINE. 445 



whose introduction goes back for any number of years, 

 or which has been cultivated to any extent within the 

 British Islands. In tracing its history, it appears to have 

 been first grown by the Duchess of Beaufort, at Bad- 

 mington, in 1705. Soon afterwards, it was planted in 

 considerable numbers at Longleat, in Wiltshire, by Lord 

 Weymouth, from whom it derives the name of the Wey- 

 mouth Pine. Many, also, about the same period, were 

 planted at Mersham Hatch, in Kent, and the Duke of 

 Argyle cultivated it extensively at Whitton. In these 

 various situations it grew with vigour and considerable 

 rapidity, and, in the course of sixty or seventy years, 

 many of the trees attained a height of from seventy to 

 eighty feet. In the northern parts of England and Scot- 

 land, however, it seldom attains so great a size, or reaches 

 the age above-mentioned, most of the trees decaying, when 

 about forty years old. This may, perhaps, partly be attri- 

 buted to the want of the necessary degree of temperature 

 during its period of growth ; for, though subjected in its 

 native country, during winter, to greater degrees of cold 

 than we usually experience here, it enjoys, during the 

 period of its activity, a temperature generally much higher 

 than that of the northern parts of our island. This ten- 

 derness or delicacy of constitution, may likewise, we think, 

 be partly owing to the origin of the plants, for most of 

 the Weymouth Pines disseminated through the kingdom 

 have been raised from the seed procured from the trees 

 originally introduced at the places previously mentioned, 

 or from their descendants ; these, it is probable, are dete- 

 riorated by climate, difference of soil, Sec, and, therefore, 

 incapable of producing a plant with a constitution equal 

 in strength and vigour to trees raised from seed ripened 

 in the native habitat of the species ; a case, in fact, ana- 



