450 
but yet even in that time we find the Earl of Lauderdale sending to 
Taymouth for fir seed, and the Marchioness of Hamilton expressing her 
own interest, and that of several of her relations, in young firs grown 
from Breadalbane seed, and boasting that she had four or five hun- 
dred of her own planting. “ Believe me,” says she, “ I think mair 
of them nor ye can imagin, for I loue them mair nor I dou al the 
froit-treis in the wordil.” The Restoration (1660) brought a great 
change. Crowds of young men, virtually exiled during the Usur- 
per’s reign, then returned from wandering over the Continent, where 
they had learnt to admire the taste of the Italian villa and the 
French chateau. Evelyn tells us how universal the passion for 
rural embellishment and magnificent country houses was among 
the English nobility, and he himself helped to extend the public 
attention to restoring and planting wood. 
Scotland kept pace as much as her poverty allowed. The botanical 
garden of Edinburgh was founded (1670). Country-seats were 
built or restored, and planting was carried on in many places where 
we can yet find trees to be ascribed to that period — still chiefly in 
the limited style of straight avenue and hedgerow. This was the 
date of a great enlargement — almost new modelling — of Taymouth, 
Hatton, Inverary, Drumlanrig, Hamilton, Hopetoun, Panmure, 
Kinross, Yester, Arniston, with a long et cetera. 
The Revolution (1688) may be said to have renewed the im- 
pulse given by the Restoration. Again, a crowd of Scotch gentle- 
men whom the unhappy courses of the last Stuarts had driven abroad, 
returned to their own country, imbued with the taste of cultivation 
they had acquired in Holland and Flanders. Among these were 
Hume of Marchmont, the Dalrymples, Lord Haddington, Dundas of 
Arniston, Argyll, Hyndford, &c. 
About this time a style of planting became fashionable, breaking 
a little from the formal straight avenue, and which was known as 
“ the wilderness.” The Earl of Mar at Alloa, his brother Lord 
Grange at Preston, Lord Haddington, and the First President 
Arniston, adopted this style ; and at Arniston is preserved a plan of 
“ the wilderness” as it was in 1726, which can still be distinctly 
traced on the lawn to the west of the house, and shows how little the 
original formality impedes the picturesqueness of the grown wood. 
There was a wilderness also at Blair- Atholl. 
Lord Haddington remarks that planting was little understood in 
