38 



SCOTS FIK. 



the true kind must still be very common in that 

 part of the country where it is alleged to be extinct, 

 or seed of the spurious kind must have been regu- 

 larly imported till a very late date. For it is plain, 

 that, until the trees that grew from the cargo first 

 imported began to bear cones, all the Scots fir-seed 

 sown in the nurseries must have been received from 

 the same quarter. For the first sixteen or twenty 

 years of the half century, therefore, our nurserymen 

 must have been in the practice of commissioning all 

 their Scots fir-seed from Canada, and a considerable 

 quantity of it, for at least ten years later ; for many 

 more than the first year's plantations of the spuri- 

 ous breed, must have been in a seed-bearing state 

 before a sufHcient home supply of the article could 

 be obtained. It follows from this, that many of our 

 nurserymen now living must have been acquainted 

 with this practice at the time it was common, and 

 must now remember it- But though I have had 

 intercourse with many very intelligent individuals 

 in that line, and some of them of more than thirty 

 years standing, I could never discover that any of 

 them had so much as heard of such a practice in 

 their own days, or in those of their predecessors of 

 the same profession. This misnamed Scots fir, there- 

 fore, must either have been introduced at a much 



