DESCEIPTIVB ENUMEIIATION OF TREES. 99 



heard tliey are in no great esteem among the con- 

 tractors for the French dockyards. 



In the memohs of the Royal Society of Agri- 

 culture at Paris for the year 1787, there is an 

 essay by M. le President de la Tour d'Aigues, on 

 the culture of the Larch, in "which it is celebrated 

 as one of the most usisful of all timber trees. He 

 tells us that, in his own garden, he has rails which 

 were put up in the year 1743, partly of Oak, and 

 partly of Larch. The former, he says, have 

 yielded to time, but the latter are still sound. 

 And in his castle of Tour d'Aigues he has larchen 

 beams of twenty inches square, which are sound, 

 though above two hundred years old. The finest 

 trees he knows, of this kind, grow in some parts 

 of Dauphine, and in the forest of Baye in Pro- 

 vence, where there are Larches, he tells us, which 

 two men cannot fathom. I have heard that old, 

 dry Larch will take such a polish as to become 

 almost transparent, and that, in this state, it may 

 be wrought into the most beautiful wainscot. In 

 my encomium of the Larch, I must not omit that 

 the old painters used it more than any other wood 

 to paint on, before the use of canvas became general. 



