THE COMMON LARCH. 489 



of the most important works, especially where strength 

 and durability are required. 



In England, though it may be traced for nearly two 

 hundred years, it was not till within the last fifty or sixty 

 that it came to be treated as a timber tree, having 

 previously been considered in the light of a rare exotic 

 ornamental appendage to the garden. Parkinson, in his 

 " Paradisus," published in 1629, the first author who men- 

 tions the Larch as growing in England, speaks of it 

 as " rare, and nursed up with a few, and those only 

 lovers of variety." Evelyn, thirty-five years afterwards, 

 in his " Sylva," mentions a Larch of goodly stature, 

 growing at Chelmsford in Essex, but it evidently was 

 a tree of rare occurrence at the time he wrote. About 

 sixty years posterior to this date, we find Miller, in his 

 "Dictionary,' 1 published in 1731, remarking, that "this 

 tree is now pretty common in English gardens," and in 

 the edition of 1759, he again speaks of it as then plentiful 

 in most of the nurseries in England, and that " of late 

 years great numbers of trees had been transplanted." 

 This latter date, we may observe, was posterior to its 

 introduction into Scotland, which, according to some ac- 

 counts, took place in 1725, when the trees previously 

 mentioned are said to have been planted at Dalwick ; 

 others, and amongst them the late Dr. Walker, assert 

 that the first Larches brought into Scotland were those 

 planted at Dunkeld, in 1727. The original plants, ac- 

 cording to the popular account, were brought from Italy 

 with some orange trees and other exotic plants, and for 

 some time received a hot-house treatment, but being found 

 to sicken under such a discipline, they were transplanted 

 into the open garden, where they soon began to thrive 

 and grow with the vigour natural to the tree. 



