224 THE LARCH. 
sity of acclimatation. In forming a large forest of larch in 
Belgium, he gave special orders to have the plants from the 
nurseries of Messrs. John Grigor and Co., Forres, and sent the 
orders twelve months before requiring the plants each year, 
during the three years required to complete the forest. All 
these plants were the produce of Scotch-grown larch seed, and 
formed at least part of the third or fourth generation of the 
tree in Scotland. 
There can be no doubt that the reason why acclimatized 
plants of the larch are so seldom sought after is, that the 
great difference between plants from Scotch seed and those 
from foreign seed is not known. It is seldom that the con- 
trast in hardiness is brought under the planter’s notice. If 
he has once seen the hardiness of the plant inured to the 
climate, it forms a subject not to be forgotten; and then a 
judicious planter would no more allow the plants from foreign 
seed to be inserted in his plantation than he would any other 
species of half-hardy tree. 
I am not prepared to say that the influence of acclimatation 
will extend so far as to make the tree more and more hardy 
in proportion to the number of successive generations that are 
produced by seed-bearing. It may be that a few generations 
of the tree in this country will render it as hardy as its nature 
will admit of becoming. 
The plantations in my neighbourhood are generally very 
healthy, and probably are composed of the third, fourth, and 
fifth generations from the Atholl larch forests. Where bare 
moorland adjoins some of them, the young seedling plants 
may be seen in acres, from self-sown seed, like to the indigenous 
growth of young pines beside the native forests. 
A person unacquainted with the nature of the trees and the 
influence of seasons would be apt to suppose that if the plants 
were too tender the severity of winter would clear the ground 
of them in early life, so that there would be no chance of their 
remaining to die by frost at a more advanced state in the 
forest. This, however, is not the case so uniformly as might 
be expected. Many are severely injured, but plants in nur- 
