174 THE PINE TREE. 
out from the side of each to be used as candles by the cottars, 
yet the trees continue quite green and healthy, with the 
hollows overhung with turpentine icicles several inches in 
length. 
The pines grown in these districts appear to be of one 
species, and differ from the great bulk of those produced in 
the low counties of Scotland in the following respects :— 
The Highland pine is of a more robust and shaggy appear- 
ance. In early life it grows, although crowded together, to a 
greater girth; it is found to attain a greater size on very wet 
ground; its wood is redder and harder, and consequently 
more durable, and is found to be more inflammable. It pro- 
duces very few fertile flowers or cones, and what it does 
produce are uniformly found to be rounder, smaller, and 
whiter, and it outlives many generations of the common 
cultivated fir, and ultimately attains a‘larger size. 
It may be difficult to ascertain the differences in plants 
necessary to constitute a distinct species, but if the superiority 
of the Highland pines to the common tree of the low country 
should not be attributed to a difference in kind, the great 
proportion of the trees in Scotland, by repeated cultivation, 
must have lamentably degenerated, since it is known that 
thousands of the common fir have arrived at maturity, and 
thousands have died of old age, without ever producing timber 
in any respect comparable to those of the districts now 
attempted to be described; and they who aim not to propa- 
gate these magnificent objects of nature, overlook that analogy 
which is everywhere observable in the works of creation. 
In the parish of Dyke the remnant of a plantation seventy 
years old, which did not form half a cover on the seventy- 
three acres of ground which it occupied, was lately disposed of 
by public sale for £2500. The wood had always been cele- 
brated for its fine quality, and the last of it was employed for 
railway sleepers, where the timber specified was that of “the 
best native Highland.” It could not be distinguished from 
the finest Strathspey native wood, and people were recently 
alive who knew that the young plants of this wood were 
