348 



THE SCOTCH FIR OR PINE. 



It is curious to observe," says Sir T. D. Lauder 

 in another place, '^how the work of renovation 

 goes on in a Pine-forest. The young seedlings 

 come up as thick as they do in the nurseryman's 

 seed-beds ; and in the same relative degree of 

 thickness do they continue to grow, till they are 

 old enough to be cut down. The competition 

 which takes place between the adjacent individual 

 plants creates a rivalry that increases their upward 

 growth, whilst the exclusion of the air prevents 

 the formation of lateral branches, or destroys 

 them after they are formed. Thus Nature pro- 

 duces by far the most valuable timber ; for it is 

 tall, straight, of uniform diameter throughout its 

 whole length, and free from knots ; all which 

 qualities combine to render it fit for spars, which 

 fetch double or triple the sum per foot that other 

 trees do. The large and spreading trees are on 

 the outskirts of the masses, and straggle here and 

 there in groups or single trees." 



How little the hand of man has had to do at 

 any period, except within the last fifty years, in 

 planting the Pine in Scotland, appears from the 

 numerous extensive tracts which were once 

 crowded forests, but have been dismantled by 

 human agency. Almost every district of the 

 Highlands bears the trace of the vast forest with 

 which, at no very distant period, the hills and 

 heaths were covered : some indeed have decayed 

 with age, but large tracts were purposely de- 

 stroyed in the latter end of the sixteenth and 

 beginning of the seventeenth centuries. On the 

 south side of Ben Nevis, a large Pine-forest, 

 which extended from the western Braes of Lochabar 

 to the black water and mosses of Ranach, was 



