THE PINE TREE. 165 
but these are less apt to find out the crop, and a season 
sometimes passes over without a visit from them. 
The seed-beds during the first and second summers require 
no further attention beyond that of weeding. After the 
second summer’s growth the seedling plants are fit for being 
planted into bare moorland or heath. In the north of Scotland 
a greater number of Scotch fir plants are inserted in plantations 
at this age than at any other.—(See MOORLAND PLANTATIONS.) 
To adapt plants for situations where they have to contend 
with a rank surface vegetation or any other herbage than 
short heath, they must be first transplanted into nursery 
lines ; which is generally done when the plants are two years 
old. The lines should be eight or ten inches distant, and the 
plants two or three inches apart. These dimensions are 
sufficient for their remaining one year in the lines, but nearly 
twice this space is necessary for the plants if they are required 
to be a second year in the lines, which brings them to the 
greatest size and age at which the Scotch pine should be 
removed. While on this subject, it is worthy of remark that 
the plants best adapted for living in a bare and barren ex- 
posure, such as a hill-top, are those which are transplanted 
at the age of one year, and nursed one year in the lines, a 
sort rarely used, but most tenacious of life. 
The price of two years’ seedling native Highland pines is 
commonly 2s. per 1000; one-year-old seedling and one year 
transplanted, 3s. 6d.; two years’ seedling one year trans- 
planted, 4s. to 5s.; two-year-old seedlings two years trans- 
planted, 8s. to 10s. per 1000; the common varieties of the 
tree produced from plantation woods are frequently sold at 
fully one-third under these prices. 
There is no other tree that grows so freely, and produces 
timber so valuable on poor soils of very opposite qualities. 
It luxuriates on the dry and gravelly heath-covered moors, 
its roots penetrate among the fissures and débris of rocks, 
and support the tree in the most scanty resources of almost 
every formation. Stagnant water is ruinous to the tree; but 
as its roots generally range near to the surface of the ground, 
