THE COMMON LARCH. 



491 



by itself as a forest tree, which he carried into execution on 

 a small scale, by planting three acres with Larch alone, 

 on Craigvinion near Dunkeld, at a higher elevation than 

 those planted by his father, Duke James, upon the same 

 hill in 1759. 



At the decease of Duke John, which took place in 1774, 

 eleven thousand four hundred Larches had been added to 

 the nineteen hundred and forty-one planted by his father. 

 The cultivation of the Larch was pursued by his son, John, 

 the late Duke of Athol, who succeeded to the title and 

 property in 1774, with an ardour and perseverance which 

 not only place his name at the head of the list of exten- 

 sive and successful planters, but entitle his memory to the 

 respect and gratitude of his country as a public benefactor, 

 inasmuch as his example, independent of the forests he 

 himself created, has led to that extensive cultivation and 

 dissemination of the Larch, which, in a few years, will go 

 a great way to supply the kingdom with a description of 

 timber much more valuable for all important purposes than 

 any we can import, and which we may hope will hereafter 

 render us in a great measure independent of that supply 

 which we have now to look for from abroad. 



For several years the operations of the Duke were 

 necessarily restricted, by the difficulty of procuring a suffi- 

 cient number of Larch plants ; but as the deficiency gra- 

 dually became lessened, in consequence of a constant suc- 

 cession of the earlier planted trees arriving at a cone- 

 bearing age and the importation of seed from abroad, 

 plantations upon a scale of gigantic magnitude were suc- 

 cessively undertaken and finished, and we find that, at the 

 period of the Duke's decease, which occurred in 1830, an 

 area of nearly ten thousand acres had been planted with 

 Larch alone, and that the aggregate number planted upon 



