64 BIRNAM WOOD 



prescience of the aforesaid Duke of Athole. Much of the 

 ground about Dunkeld is so steep as to be quite inaccess- 

 ible for ordinary planting operations ; so that one wonders 

 how exotic trees like larch, spruce, and silver fir obtained 

 their foothold on these cliffs which they do so greatly 

 adorn. The tradition runs that Napier the engineer, 

 being on a visit to the planting Duke, and sympathising 

 with his host's desire to restore the woodland, caused 

 tin canisters to be filled with tree seeds and fired out 

 of cannon against the heights. The canisters bursting 

 against the rocks, scattered the seeds bravely, so that 

 now every ledge, every cranny on Craig-y-Barns and 

 Craig Vinean bears noble timber. 



One cannot realise the size of some of these trees until 

 one stands beside and lays a hand on them. One day 

 of late I stepped ashore from my boat in a grove of 

 splendid Scots pines to land a good salmon I had hooked. 

 That operation having been happily effected, on looking 

 round me I was struck by the gigantic dimensions of 

 the tree stems. On measuring the Scots pine nearest to 

 me I found its girth to be fifteen feet at the height of my 

 shoulders. Not far off was a Weymouth pine {Pinus 

 strobus) with a girth of thirteen feet three inches; a Spanish 

 chestnut, fifteen feet ; and a spruce fir, thirteen feet. The 

 spruce fir, by the bye, is not usually a desirable addition to 

 our woodlands, except on economic grounds. It is impatient 

 of sea winds, its foliage has a tendency to rustiness, and 

 scragginess generally befalls it in middle life. But the 

 spruce forest of Dunkeld is simply glorious; silvery 

 columns supporting dense towering spires of rifle-green to 

 the height of more than one hundred feet. Here, too, 

 may be seen the common silver fir, grown as it should be, 



