NURSERY AND PLANTING. 



97 



Larch. — {Pinus Larix.) 



The larch is a native of Alpine situations in the South of 

 Europe. The finest trees and most valuable timber being 

 found in chasms on the north sides of mountains, where least 

 exposed to the sun, and where the summer may be said to be 

 of short duration. Many opinions have been offered as to the 

 exact date of its introduction into Britain. It appears to have 

 been cultivated by Parkinson in or previously to 1629; and 

 in 1664, we find it noticed by Evelyn as having attained a 

 considerable size at Chelmsford, in Essex. Harte, in 1715, 

 recommends it in his essays, and has left us a drawing of the 

 tree. It is rather singular that Langley, who wrote so soon 

 afterwards, should not mention this tree. Its introduction 

 into Scotland is stated by Mr. Lambert to have been effected 

 by the celebrated Lord Kames, in 1734, and planted on the 

 Blair Drummond estate ; and, in 1741, it was extensively 

 planted by the Duke of Athol, at Dunkeld, who, according 

 to Dr. Walker, had introduced it from London, as a delicate 

 exotic, in 1727, along with some orange-trees, and these are 

 said to have been kept in the green-house at Dunkeld, until 

 their hardy properties were discovered, and then that they 

 were planted out in the garden, where they remain to this 

 time, and one of them has attained the great size of one 

 hundred feet in height, and ten feet in circumference. There 

 are, however, specimens of this tree of much larger size, in 

 the garden of General Campbell, at Monzie, in Perthshire, 

 the largest of which is seventeen and a half feet in circum- 

 ference, and another nearly as much. The larches planted 

 throughout Scotland, about fifty and sixty years ago, are now 

 trees of vast magnitude, and have fully answered all the eulo- 

 giums which have been bestowed on it, so much so, that the 

 larch is now considered, on the whole, the most useful and 

 valuable timber-tree, not even excepting the oak. Some of 

 these trees, on the Dunkeld property, have attained the height 

 of one hundred and twenty feet in the space of fifty years, 

 that is, an average growth of above two feet four inches annu- 

 ally; and some of them,, in eighty years, upon poor hilly land, 



