358 



THE planter's GUIDE. 



important office it will grow in barren and exposed 

 situations, where no other tree, not even the Larch, is 

 found to succeed. As to the Larch " outbraving " it any 

 where, the thing has no existence, except in Marshall's 

 own distorted representations. 



There are few trees that have been applied to more 

 various or important uses than this. The tallest and 

 straightest furnish masts for our navy. The timber is 

 far more valuable than that of any other of the Pine 

 genus. It is resinous, durable, and applicable to number- 

 less domestic purposes, as common deal, which is variously 

 red and yellow, but most generally white. The spread- 

 ing or horizontal Fir, brought slowly to maturity in the 

 Scottish Highlands, on gravelly soils, is believed to be 

 equal to the best Pine of Norway or Sweden ; and were 

 a profitable return the sole object of planting, there is, 

 perhaps, no method of obtaining it so speedy and certain, 

 as by successive crops or plantations of Scotch Fir, or of 

 Scotch Fir and Larch together ; the ground being always 

 replanted, after the trees are felled, and a crop or two of 

 grain intermediately taken. 



Exclusively of the value of the wood, it is a curious 

 fact, that no fewer than eleven distinct substances, as 

 enumerated by Lambert, are obtained by various pro- 

 cesses from this tree. These are liquid resin or turpentine, 

 extract of the juice, yellow resin, essential oil, common 

 resin, black resin or colophony, tar, tar-water, pitch, 

 lamp black, and bark bread ; which last, as Linnseus states, 

 affords food to the Laplanders during a great part of the 

 year. In several parts of the Highlands, the roots are 

 dug up, and, being divided into small splinters, serve the 

 inhabitants for candles.''^ 



* See Lambert's Monogr. on the Genus Pinus. 



