i02 ON QUALITY OF SOIL. 



applied, in any land well calculated for larcli or 

 Scots firs. There are at Careston, in Forfarshire, 

 some very thriving plantations of oaks, which have 

 arrived at a fair size, on ground so moist as to have 

 produced a good crop of spruce. I am aware that 

 what I have here advanced concerning this tree, will 

 be disputed by many planters, especially in the 

 north of Scotland, where an opinion is very common, 

 that it is only in some few much favoured situations, 

 that plantations of oak will ever be good for any 

 thing. Of this opinion I shall have occasion to 

 speak at greater length in another place ; at present 

 I only remark, that it has had its origin solely, in 

 the very inadequate, not to say absurd and prepos- 

 terous methods, which have been adhered to in at- 

 tempting to propagate the tree in question. To 

 explode these methods, and to introduce better in 

 their place, were the principal objects which led me 

 to undertake the present work ; and, if the plan of 

 propagating oak, laid down in the subsequent part 

 of this volume, be generally adopted, I feel confi- 

 dent, that every complaint about the incapability, 

 whether of our soil or climate, to produce it, will 

 soon be hushed. In every part of the country, 

 the planters of oak have all along proceeded on a 

 system which is hostile to its nature ; but, in the 



