PROCEEDINGS—PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE. lxi 
compensating process of planting was going on, so that there were 
only the natural processes of reproduction—namely, by seeds scat¬ 
tered by wind, water, birds, etc.—to make up for the artificial losses 
produced by the advance of civilisation. 
It thus came about that a century ago or more Perthshire, in 
common with the greater part of Scotland, was nearly denuded of its 
more valuable timber trees, and serious consequences to climate, 
health, and the condition of the soil were threatened. At this 
juncture, however, it came to be recognised by the legislature and by 
our landed proprietors that, if the value and productiveness of the 
land were to be maintained, a more conservative policy must be 
adopted, and the ravages of time made good by careful forestry. In 
this movement the proprietors of Perthshire took a leading part, and 
the results of their efforts we see, to a large extent, in the wooding 
which beautifies so many parts of our county to-day. In particular, 
John, Fourth Duke of Athole, was an enthusiastic arboriculturist, at 
a time when that art was in its infancy, and he spent much of his 
time, as well as large sums of money, in re-planting his vast estates 
with the most suitable trees. It was he who, at the beginning of the 
present century, first planted the larch in any considerable numbers 
in this country. It was nearly a century earlier—namely, in 1738— 
that the first specimens were actually brought to Scotland, but these, 
which were planted at Dunkeld and Blair-Atholl, were introduced 
more as exotic curiosities than with a view to practical arboriculture. 
The two so-called “Parent Larches” of Dunkeld still stand, after 
more than a century and a half, as souvenirs of this first attempt to 
introduce a tree which has now so thoroughly established itself on 
the flanks of our Highland hills. 
We will now glance at the present distribution of the tree-flora of 
our county, in order to note the combined results of the original 
forestration and of the more recent introductions. 
The trees—indigenous and introduced—of our county may be 
said broadly to occur under five sets of conditions. These are:— 
first, the more or less continuous plantations on the Highland hills ; 
second, the scattered wooding of the Highland glens; third, the belt 
of wooding which fringes the river Tay and its tributaries during the 
greater part of its course ; fourth, the tracts of wooding which occur 
in the lowland parts of the county; and, fifth, the individual trees 
which are scattered everywhere throughout the valley floors and in 
parks and cultivated fields. Under each of these conditions we 
find certain species, or series of species, predominating. With the 
exception of the larch and the spruce, it may be said that the 
indigenous species, such as the birch, Scots fir, rowan, hazel, oak, 
etc., predominate in the Highland parts of the county ; while the 
introduced species, such as the beech, elm, lime, sycamore, chestnut, 
etc., are found in greater abundance in the lowland districts. This, 
of course, is accounted for by the fact that the native species are 
more or less boreal in their distribution, and therefore favour a 
habitat with northern or sub-alpine conditions, such as light soil, 
exposure to severe climatic conditions, etc. The introduced species, 
