192 FOREST TREES. 
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, quoted by Loudon, ob- 
serves: “It is unquestionably by much the most 
enduring timber we have. ‘It is remarkable that 
whilst the heart wood is not formed at all in other 
resinous trees till they have lived a good many years, 
™the Larch, on the other hand, begins to make it soon 
after it is planted ; and whilst you may fell a Scotch 
Pine, thirty years old, and find no heart wood in it, 
you can scarcely cut down a young Larch large 
enough to be a walking-stick, without finding just 
such a proportion of heart wood, compared to its 
diameter as a tree, as you will find in the largest 
Larch in the forest, compared to its diameter.” The 
same writer mentions an experiment made in the 
river Thames: “Posts of equal thickness and 
strength, some of Larch and others of Oak, were 
driven down facing the river wall, where they were 
alternately covered with water by the flow of the tide, 
and left dry by its fall. This species of alternation 
is the most trying of all circumstances for the endur- 
ance of timber, and accordingly the oaken posts 
decayed, and were twice renewed, in a very few years, 
while those made of Larch remained altogether 
unchanged.” A report made by M. Boissel de Mon- 
ville, on the uses of the Larch, says: “ Larch wood 
is much used in Switzerland for shingles to cover the 
roofs of the houses, and for vine props. For the 
latter purpose, it is found the most durable of all 
kinds of wood; the vine props made of it are never 
taken up, they remain fixed for an indefinite succes- 
sion of years, and see crop after crop of vines spring 
