350 



THE SCOTCH FIR OR PINE. 



more, once famous for the size and age of its 

 timber, whose magnificent Pines clothed one of 

 the romantic glens between the Cairngorum range 

 and the river Spey. This noble forest was pur- 

 chased of the Duke of Gordon in 1783, and fur- 

 nished materials for building no less than forty- 

 one sail of ships, including a frigate of one thou- 

 sand and fifty tons. A specimen of timber from 

 one of these trees, preserved in Gordon Castle, is 

 six feet two inches long, and five feet five inches 

 broad, with the texture of the finest Red-wood 

 Pine, and shewing annual growths to the number 

 of two hundred and thirty-five. The spot was 

 visited about twenty-five years since by Mr. Selby, 

 who thus describes its appearance : — Scattered 

 trees, some of which were in a scathed or dying 

 state, of huge dimensions, picturesque in appear- 

 ance from their knotty trunks, tortuous branches, 

 and wide-spreading heads, were seen in different 

 directions, at unequal and frequently at consider- 

 able distances from each other : the solitary and 

 mournful-looking relics of the departed glories 

 of this once well-clad woodland scene, and which 

 had only escaped the axe from their previous 

 decay, or the comparative worthlessness of their 

 knotty trunks ; while the surface of the ground in 

 almost every direction was littered and bristling 

 with the decaying tops and loppings of the felled 

 trees, among which, mosses of various species were 

 growing with a luxuriance we never saw equalled — 

 nourished, it would appear, and encouraged by 

 the partial stoppage and stagnation of the surface- 

 water thus impeded in its course, and threatening 

 to convert a large proportion of the surface that 

 had once been forest into a peat moss." Sir 



