LARCH PLANTING IN EARLY DAYS 135 
stated, in 1774 put into 15,000 acres of his ducal soil 
more than 27,000,000 Larch trees, and put them 
into 15,000 acres of ground, moreover, that had 
previously lain waste. What a relief from that 
nightmare vision of the yellow-coloured paper that 
so mutely, surely tells its yearly tale of ever-growing 
demand notes and insatiable tax-gatherers must it 
have been to the lineal inheritors of those broad 
acres when their eyes removed and rested upon the 
green of those long stretches of well-grown Larches 
fringing those hills from whence was to come their 
help! 
Let, then, all croakers and blind worshippers of 
the Eternal Yesterday, who deprecate and have 
deprecated the introduction of new trees from 
distant lands, ponder on this little venture, under- 
taken once upon a time long ago in the shape of the 
importation of a new tree at Dunkeld, planted in 
1738 by James, 3rd Duke of Atholl, at a time when 
the Laxch was still a stranger in our land, and looked 
upon as an alien with a questionable past and with 
a future of doubtful utility. 
The history of the Larch contains a long Black List 
of those enemy hosts that assail tree life. They have 
been stricken more than their share with the plague 
of pests, and afflicted with the curse of canker from 
within and without, at one time so much so that their 
very prestige was shaken. Beetles, the larve of 
many moths, woolly-white aphides, have been reck- 
oned among their foes, and prepared the way for 
the more subtle influence of fungus organisms to 
complete a ruin. 
As trees of great importance, they have in conse- 
quence made themselvés conspicuous before the 
footlights of the botanical, zoological, and mycological 
world. The learned attention of savants—and not in 
vain—has been directed upon the life-history of the 
