CHAP. II. 



BRITISH ISLANDS. 



105 



1760. The most considerable of these, he says, was that of old 

 Mr. Dickson, at Hassendeanburn, in Teviotdale. This nursery, we 

 are informed by the present proprietors, Messrs. Archibald Dick- 

 son and Co., was founded in 17^2.9. From it sprang, in 1767, 

 the nursery of Messrs. Dickson, now Dickson and Turnbull, at 

 Perth; and, subsequently, another brother of the Hassendeanburn 

 family, Walter Dickson, began the house of Dickson and Co. of 

 Edinburgh, now Dicksons and Shankley, in connexion with Mr, 

 James Dickson, who was no relative of the family. It thus appears, 

 that Mr. Robert Dickson of Hassendeanburn was the father of 

 commercial forest tree nurseries in Scotland. The three nurseries 

 established by him and his two brothers being still the m-^t 

 extensive in that country. Mr. Archibald Dickson, the present 

 chief of the firm at Hassendeanburn and at Hawick, to whom 

 we ai'e indebted for the above information, states, in his letter of 

 March 24. 1835, that he is now bringing up some of the fifth 

 generation to the trade. The next considerable public esta- 

 blishment of this kind was that of Messrs. Anderson and Leslie 

 of Broughton Park, Edinburgh; and contemporary Avith this 

 were those of Mr. Richmond of Leith Walk, of Gordon of 

 Fountainbridge, of Boutcher of Comely Bank, of Messrs. 

 Austen of Glasgow, of Thomas Leslie and Co. of Dundee, 

 of Reid of Aberdeen, of Sampson of Kilmarnock, and a 

 number of others. The most scientific nurseryman in Scotland, 

 during the 18th century, appears to have been Mr. Boutcher. 

 According to an authority quoted by Sir Henry Steuart, Mr. 

 Boutcher was " the honestest and most judicious nurseryman 

 Scotland ever had." He made an attempt to improve Scottish 

 arboriculture about 1760; but, according to Sir Henry, he was 

 " undervalued by the ignorance of his age, and suffered to 

 languish unsupported for years at Comely Garden, and to die at 

 last in obscurity and indigence." {Plante7-'s Gtdde, 2d edit, 

 p. 399.) Boutcher's Treatise o?i raising Forest Trees was the 

 first work on the subject of its time, and Scottish nurserymen 

 have only produced one work on planting superior to it ; namely, 

 the edition of Nicol's Planter's Kalendar^ which was edited, and 

 in great part rewritten, by Mr. Sang of Kirkaldy. 



The i?idige?ious trees of Ireland are the same as those of 

 Britain, though such as consider the box, the true service, and 

 the common English elm, truly indigenous to England will not 

 accord with this, as these trees are never found in an apparently 

 wild state in L'eland. Those, on the contrary, who consider 

 the yi'rbutus and i^rica mediterranea indigenous to Ireland 

 find them wanting in England, and may hence consider that 

 Ireland has more native trees and shrubs than this country. 

 There can be very little doubt that the common yew is an in- 

 digenous tree in Ireland, for trunks of it, of large dimensions, 



