354 



THE planter's GUIDE. 



ought to engage the attention of the British planter, and 

 should be invariably excluded from every soil and situation 

 in which any other timber tree can be made to flourish. 

 The north aspect of black and barren heights is the only 

 situation in which it ought to be tolerated, and even there 

 the Larch is found to outbrave it. On better soils, and 

 milder situations, the luood of the Scotch Fir is worth 

 little, and its growth is so licentious, as to overrun every 

 thing which grows in its immediate neighbourhood. This 

 renders it wholly unfit to be associated with other timber 

 trees : we, therefore, now discard it entirely from useful 

 plantations!'^'' 



Here is a most sweeping and authoritative edict, of 

 which the petulance is as remarkable as the want of in- 

 formation that is displayed in it. On any other subject, 

 it would be difficult to point out as much nonsense and 

 as much ignorance in the same number of sentences. 

 Even the fads of the case are all the very reverse of what 

 are so dogmatically set forth. This altogether is the 

 more remarkable in Marshall, as he is not among the 

 merely theoretical writers on woods, but was a planter of 

 considerable skill, and not insensible to picturesque efi'ect. 

 When men of this description adopt, and endeavour to 

 propagate, such absurdities, it may easily be imagined 

 how prejudice is fostered and errors multiplied among 

 others, who are unable to judge for themselves. To the 

 honour, however, of two of the most accomplished scholars 

 and most pleasing writers of the present day, Messrs 

 Gilpin and Price, to whom the respectable name of Pontey 

 may be added, they have done much to counteract such 

 opinions, and to bring the merit of this noble tree into 

 the notice it deserves. Gilpin, like all painters of a nice 

 perception of their art, is sometimes fastidious ; but, in 



* Marshall's Rural Ornament, vol. i. p. 145. < 



