104 



BRITISH FOREST TREES. 



and even Yellow pine. Larch, in the districts of 

 Scotland where it is gro^Mi and much in use, is uni- 

 versally allowed to be considerably stronger than 

 other fir; and the sawyers of it have one-fourth 

 more pay per stated measure. We, ourselves, have 

 had considerable experience of the strength of larch 

 applied to many purposes, and have found it in ge- 

 Vteral much superior in strength to other fir. We 

 have known a crooked to]3mast of this timber, to 

 which the sailors bore a grudge, defy their utmost 

 ingenuity to get carried away. We once had fom* 

 double horse- carts, made (excepting the wheels) of 

 peeled young larch of rather slow growth, for the 

 carriage of large stones ; these, by mistake, were 

 made very slight, so light, that, without the wiieels, 

 a man could have carried one of them away. When 

 we saw the first loading of stones nearly a ton 

 -weight each, two in each cart, and the timber yield- 

 ing and creaking like a willow-basket, we did not 

 expect they would have supported the weight and 

 jostlings of a rugged road many yards; yet they 

 withstood this coarse employment for a long time. 

 The timber of larch near the top of the tree is, how- 

 ever, very inferior and deficient in toughness ; and it 

 is not improbable that the experiments above allud- 

 ed to at Woolwich had been made mth larch tim* 



