DECIDUOUS ORNAMENTAL TREES. 
241 
The Larch is the great timber tree of Europe. Its wood 
is remarkably heavy, strong, and durable, exceeding in all 
those qualities the best English oak. To these, it is said tc 
add the peculiarity of being almost uninflammable, and 
resisting the influence of heat for a long time. Vitruvius 
relates that when Caesar attacked the castle of Larignum, 
near the Alps, whose gate was commanded by a tower buht 
of this wood, from the top of which the besieged annoyed 
him with their stones and darts, he commanded his army to 
surround it with fagots, and set fire to the whole. When, 
however, all the former were consumed, he was astonished 
to find the Larch tower uninjured.* 
The Larch is unquestionably the most enduring timber 
that we have. It is remarkable, that whilst the red wood 
or heart wood is not formed at all in the other resinous 
trees, till they have lived for a good many years, the Larch, 
on the contrary, begins to make it. soon after it is planted ; 
and while you may fell a Scotch fir of thirty years old, 
and find no red wood in it, you can hardly cut down a 
young Larch large enough to be a walking stick, without 
finding just such a proportion of red wood compared to its 
diameter as a 'ree, as you will find in the largest Larch tree 
in the forest, compared to its diameter. To prove the 
?alue of the Larch as a timber tree, several experiments 
were made in the river Thames. Posts of equal thickness 
and strength, some of Larch and others of oak, were 
driven down facing the river wall, where they were 
alternately covered with water by the effect of the tide, 
and then left dry by its fall. This species of alternation is 
the most trying of all circumstances for the endurance of 
timber ; and accordingly the oaken posts decayed, ana 
were twice renewed in the course of a very few years, 
* Newton’s Vitruvius, p. 40. 
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