48 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



three feet high, there was nothing in the shape of a tree or shrub 

 anywhere within sight ; one of these little willow bushes I have carefully 

 preserved as a curiosity, and on the site where the other was I lately 

 planted an azalea, which will, I think, soon look down on its neighbour, 

 the poor little aboriginal willow. 



I started work in the early spring of 1864 by running a fence across 

 the neck of the peninsula from sea to sea, to keep out the sheep. I was 

 very young then (not being of age when the place was bought), and 

 perfectly ignorant of everything connected with forestry and gardening, 

 having never had any permanent home, and having been brought up 

 a great deal on the Continent, but I had all my life longed to begin 

 gardening and planting, and bad, I fully believe, inherited a love for 

 trees and flowers from my father and grandfather. 



My mother undertook the whole trouble of house-building, and I set 

 myself to the rest of the work with a determination to succeed if possible. 

 Oh that I had only known then what I know now, and could have 

 started with my present experience of over forty years ! For example, 

 I had never heard of the dwarf Pinus montana ; had I known its merits 

 then, as I know them now, I would have begun by planting a thick 

 belting of it among the rocks right round my peninsula, just above 

 high-water mark, to break the violent squalls carrying the salt spindrift 

 which is so inimical to all vegetation. I did not know that there was 

 little use in planting Pinus austriaca, mountain ash, service, or even 

 birches in the middle of a wood, as, though they look nice for some 

 years, they eventually get smothered by the faster-growing trees, and 

 one has the trouble of cutting most of them out. If I were beginning 

 again I would commence, as I have already said, with a row of the 

 Tyrolese Pinus motana above high-water mark, then put Pinus austriaca 

 behind it, and for the third row I would plant that admirable tree 

 Vinus Laricio ; this triple row would form my fortification against the 

 ocean blast, and, thus protected, behind these I would start putting 

 in my ordinary forest trees, Scotch pines, silver firs, sycamores, oaks, 

 beeches, &c. 



If I were asked what tree I have the highest opinion of for hardiness 

 and rapidity of growth on bad soil and on exposed sites, I would certainly 

 award the first prize to the Corsican pine. I have seen them in their 

 own island on mountains 9,000 feet above sea level, with nothing between 

 them and Spain or Algeria, growing to an enormous size — some of those 

 I measured there being twenty feet in circumference — and here, at the 

 same age, they make nearly double the amount of timber compared with 

 Scotch fir, and are proof against cattle, sheep, deer, and rabbits, which 

 no other tree is, that I know of. They told me in the ship-building 

 yards at Savona that old Laricio timber was as good as the best Baltic 

 redwood. 



I am ashamed to confess, but it can no longer be hidden, that, among 

 trees, many of the foreigners are far and away hardier and better doers 

 than our natives. The Scotch fir (as bred nowadays) is often a dreadfully 

 delicate tree when exposed to Atlantic gales. It was not so in the good 

 old times, as one finds the enormous remains of Pinus sylvestris forests 

 right out on the tops of the most exposed headlands of our west coast . 



