2154 



ARBORETUM AND FRUT1CETUM, 



PART III. 



wooded trees ; and that seeds from red- wooded 

 trees will, at least in many instances, produce 

 others the wood of which is red. The first re- 

 corded notice which we have of varieties or varia- 

 tions in the quality of the timber of the Scotch 

 pine is in the Treatise on Forest Trees, published 

 by the Earl of Haddington in 1760. His Lordship 

 says : " Though I have heard it asserted that there 

 is but one kind of Scots fir, and what difference 

 is seen in the wood when wrought is only owing to 

 the age of the tree, and the soil where it grew, 

 yet I am convinced it is otherwise ; for this reason : 

 When I cut firs that were too near the house, 

 there were people alive here who remembered when 

 my father bought the seed. It was all sown to- 

 gether in the seed bed, removed to a nursery, and 

 afterwards planted out the same day. These 

 trees I cut down, and saw some of them very 

 white and spongy, others of them red and hard, 

 though standing within a few yards of one another. 

 This makes me gather my cones from the trees 

 that have the reddest wood, as I have said 

 before." (Treatise, S^c.) Boutcher, in 1775, says 

 that it has been an old dispute, which still 

 subsists, whether there are more sorts than one of the Scotch pine or fir. 

 It is commonly objected, he adds, that the difference which we see in the 

 wood is owing to the age of the tree, or the quality of the soil in which it 

 grows ; but that this opinion is founded on insufficient observation, for 

 he has seen many pine trees cut down of equal age, in the same spot, 

 where some were white and spongy, and others red and hard. " The dif- 

 ference of colour may easily be distinguished by any one who walks 

 through a newly pruned plantation even of young trees." (Treatise, fyc., 

 p. 137.) The important fact, that both red and white wood may be pro- 

 duced by the same soil, is confirmed by two specimens of wood in Law- 

 son's Museum, Edinburgh. They were presented by James Farquharson, 

 Esq., of Invercauld, in Inverness-shire, the proprietor of some of the finest 

 native forests of Scotch pine in Scotland. One of the specimens was of 

 very fine-grained red wood, cut from a tree 200 years old, and grown on a 

 gravelly soil with a mixture of clay ; and the other was a specimen of a 

 white-wooded tree, cut from one about 70 years of age, which had been 

 grown on the same soil. (Man. p. 332.) 



The difference, both in the external appearance and in the qualities of 

 the timber of different trees of Pinus sylvestris, received a good deal of 

 attention from Mr. Don of Forfar, about 1810 (see Mem. Cal. Hort. Soc, 

 vol. i. p. 121.); and, subsequently, from various other authors, more espe- 

 cially the cultivators of the pine and fir tribe in France: but, after all that 

 has been done on the subject, we agree with M. Vilmorin, who has studied 

 P. sylvestris, in its various forms, more, we believe, than any other man, 

 that its varieties can only be properly known and described by those who 

 have studied them in collections, or ecoles d'etudc, in which several plants 

 of each sort have been planted in the same ground, and allowed to attain 

 maturity there, both standing singly, and in masses. (Delamarre's Traite 

 "Pratique dc la Culture de$ Pius, &c, p. 24. : note by M. Vilmorin.) M. 

 Vilrnorin, as we have already mentioned (p. 2121.), has made a collection, 

 for this purpose, of all the varieties of the Scotch pine that he could 

 procure in Europe, on his estate at Barres, near Montargis; with the view, 

 afi< r a suitable period, of determining the distinct sorts. In the present 

 ' uncertainty on this subject, we shall confine ourselves to giving 

 the names of a few of the more marked varieties, of which we have seen 

 plants in the environs of London. 



