MODES OF FOREST PLANTING. 57 
thirty-four days. Its formation was reported in the Prize 
Essays and Transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland 
for 1832, and being the first plantation, and consequently the 
oldest formed by me, I inspected it lately, with the view of 
ascertaining its progress and value as timber in thirty-five 
years. I was accompanied by two practical men, the one a 
forester in the constant practice of selling timber, and the 
other a timber merchant; both well acquainted with the 
purposes for which such timber is applicable, and with the 
present state of the timber market. 
I found the plantation generally in a very vigorous state, 
and containing many remarkable specimens of rapid growth. 
Near the base of the plantation, and where judicious thinning 
had been practised, the best of the larches stood from fifty to 
upwards of sixty feet high, and from four to five feet in girth 
at the ground, and from. three feet six inches to four feet two 
inches at the height of six feet. These contained from twenty 
to twenty-five cubic feet of timber, and were worth not less 
than 20s. each tree. Some of the best parts in the wood were 
worth £80 per acre; and altogether the value of the timber 
covering 400 Scotch acres, equal to about 500 imperial acres, 
at a low estimate amounted to £31,600. 
The native Highland pine presented some very fine speci- 
mens of thirty-five years’ growth, containing from fourteen to 
sixteen cubic feet of timber. Every year after this age a 
plantation, when carefully thinned, makes a great accession 
to the bulk and value of the timber. 
_ As there has been a succession of several proprietors, 
factors, and foresters on the estate since the date of the forma- 
tion of the plantation, I am unable to give any correct detail 
of the thinnings obtained from it up to the present time, 
further than that the free revenue must have been quite suffi- 
cient to have paid the cost of its formation, with interest, and 
a rent for the ground many times greater than that obtained 
for the best description of hill pasture. It had formerly been 
only common heath or moorland. 
During the next twenty or thirty years the repeated thin- 
