THE planter's GUIDE. 



355 



liis yindication of the Scotch Fir, his remarks are full of 

 good sense and correct taste. 



It maj be said, ^Yith some justice, that the Scotch Fir is 

 very rarely seen in perfection in Britain ; and, of late years, 

 it appears to have greatly degenerated. For both of these, 

 several reasons may be assigned. In the first place, it is 

 seldom planted in such a way as to be able to expand 

 and display its natural character, which other trees, more 

 or less, are allowed to do. Scotch Firs are usually raised 

 in such close and compact masses, that their lateral 

 branches soon drop off, and they grow to poles ; on which 

 the heads are stuck like so many sweeping bushes on 

 their handles. Were they disposed as single trees, or in 

 judicious groups, their aspect would be very different. No 

 doubt all trees, as has been already observed, when 

 crowded together, rise in perpendicular stems. But the 

 Pine tribe has this peculiar disadvantage attending them, 

 that their side branches, when once injured, never recover 

 or shoot out again. 



Secondly ; this tree, when allowed free room to spread, 

 does not, in what Gilpin call its " stripling state,'' possess 

 so much beauty as at an after period. But when fifty or 

 sixty years have passed, and it becomes, as the nurserymen 

 call it, clump-headed, the stem then takes an easy sweep, 

 and the lateral branches grow as beautifully and negli- 

 gently as those of deciduous trees of the most picturesque 

 character."'^ But Gilpin, when he made this remark, 

 which is extremely just, was not aware that there are two 

 distinct species of the tree commonly cultivated, and that 

 it is to one of these only, the spreading or horizontal sort, 

 that the description is applicable. 



In the third place ; the deterioration of the Scotch 

 Fir, within the last fifty or sixty years, is established 



* Forest Scenery, vol. i. pp. 88, 91, 



