IL 4. THE LARCH. 91 
bility is even superior to the oak itself, and in old vessels the 
timbers made of hacmatack have been found entirely sound, 
when those of white oak were completely decayed. On these 
accounts, it is preferred before all other woods, for knees, for 
beams, and for top timbers. The ship-builders make two va- 
rieties of the wood, the gray and the red, of which the latter is 
considered best. Its great hardness makes it valuable for steps 
i exposed situations; and its compactness gives it great power 
of resisting the action of fire, and renders it nearly incombus- 
tible, except when splintered. It would be better than any 
other wood in buildings intended to be fire-proof. 
On account of the very valuable qualities of the wood, the 
hacmatack would deserve to be extensively cultivated, and there 
are thousands of acres of cold and swampy land, where it was 
found naturally, which are now unproductive, and which might 
be clothed with it. It has, however, been found to be far infe- 
rior in rapidity of growth to the European larch, which very 
nearly resembles it in appearance, and in the excellent qualities 
of its wood. This, therefore, should be preferred, as likely to 
produce in the same time. a larger quantity of timber from the 
same surface and at the same expense. 
On favorable soils. the European larch is fit for every useful 
purpose in forty years’ growth.* Its annual rate of increase in 
Scotland has been found to be from one to one and a half 
inches in circumference at six feet from the ground, on trunks 
from ten to fifty years of age. It has, moreover, the property 
of flourishing on surfaces almost without soil, thickly strown 
with fragments of rocks, on the high and bleak sides and tops 
of hills, where vegetation scarcely exists. It was in such situ- 
ations as this, of a description which answers but too well to 
many waste spots in Massachusetts, that the most successful 
experiments were made, in Scotland, by the Dukes of Athol. 
These are so interesting in themselves, and so deserving of imi- 
tation, that a brief account of them cannot be considered unac- 
ceptable or out of place here.+ 
The estates of the Dukes of Athol are in the north of Scot- 
* Loudon’s Arboretum, IV, 23853, et seq. 
+ Highland Society’s Transactions as quoted in Loudon’s Arboretum, 2359, et seq. 
