are gone, and their stems are drawn into poles, on which their heads appear stuck as on a centre. Whereas, if the tree had grown in its natural state, all mischief had been prevented. Its stem would have taken an easy sweep, and its lateral branches, which naturally grow with as much beautiful irregularity as those of deciduous trees, would have hung loosely and negligently; and the more so, as there is something peculiarly light and feathery in its foliage. I mean not to assert that every Scotch fir, though in a natural state, would possess these beauties, but it would at least have the chance of other trees; and I have seen it, though indeed but rarely, in such a state as to equal in beauty the most elegant stone pine.

All trees indeed, crowded together, naturally rise in perpendicular stems; but the fir has this peculiar disadvantage, that its lateral branches, once injured, never shoot again. A grove of crowded saplings, elms, beeches, or almost of any deciduous trees, when thinned, will throw out new lateral branches, and in time recover a state of beauty; but if the education of the fir has been neglected, he is lost for ever.

Some of the most picturesque trees of this kind perhaps in England, adorn Mr Lenthall's deserted and ruinous mansion of Basilsleigh, in Berkshire. The soil is a deep but rich sand, which seems to be a soil adapted to them; and as they are here at perfect liberty, they not only become large and noble trees, but they expand themselves likewise in all the careless forms of Nature. No man therefore has a right to depreciate the Scotch fir, till he has seen it here, or in some other place, in a perfect state of Nature.

We agree with Mr Gilpin, to the fullest extent, in his approbation of the Scottish fir as a picturesque tree. We, for our parts, confess, that when we have seen it towering in full majesty, in the midst of some appropriate Highland scene, and sending its limbs abroad with all the unconstrained freedom of a hardy mountaineer, as if it claimed dominion over the savage regions around it, we have looked upon it as a very sublime object. People who have not seen it in its native climate and soil, and who judge of it from the wretched abortions which are swaddled and suffocated in

English plantations, amongst deep, heavy, and eternally wet clays, may well call it a wretched tree; but when its foot is among its own Highland heather, and when it stands freely on its native knoll of dry gravel, or thinly covered rock, over which its roots wander afar in the wildest reticulation, whilst its tall, furrowed, and often gracefully sweeping red and gray trunk, of enormous circumference, rears aloft its high umbrageous canopy, then would the greatest sceptic on this point be compelled to prostrate his mind before it with a veneration which perhaps was never before excited in him by any other tree. The Scottish fir pastures entirely on the surface soil, and never sends its roots downwards. All it wants, therefore, is dryness below. It thrives by the sparkling rill, the mountain torrent, or the wide and rapid river; but though Nature often sows it in the bog, it is there stinted in its growth, and soon sickens and dies.

Though we call the Highlands of Scotland the native country of this tree, we do so only so far as Great Britain is concerned, for there is, perhaps, no tree which is more extensively diffused over the world. That part of Europe which lies above the fifty-fifth degree of latitude is covered with immense pine forests, which are in a great measure composed of this species. In the centre of Europe, it is to be found on the Pyrenees, the Tyrolian, Swiss, and Vosgean mountains, and in North America it abounds. With the exception of the cedar and the larch, the Scottish fir produces better timber than any of the pine family. That which comes from Norway and the Baltic, and from the sides of the river Memel, in Poland, called Red Deal, or Memel Fir, is very durable; but not more so than the timber of our Highland trees. Pine timber is best in the colder situations. In the warmer regions, it contains a great deal of white, or sapwood. At what time the sapwood is transformed into durable or red wood has not yet been determined by vegetable physiologists. Though most writers believe that the ligneous matter is deposited in the second year, we are disposed to doubt the fact. More than a dozen layers of sapwood may be counted on some trees; and, what is a very interesting observation, where trees have been much exposed to the midday sun, the whole southern half of the tree is sometimes found to be little better than sapwood, whilst the northern half may contain only a layer or two at the circumference.

There can be no doubt that the whole hilly regions of

Of

Great Britain and Ireland were at one time covered with forests, which, in a great measure, consisted of pine. About a century and a half ago, that elevated part of the north of Ireland which extends through the counties of Donegal and Tyron, was covered with one vast pine forest, of which hardly a vestige now remains; and, indeed, short as the period is since its disappearance, it is not now very well understood how it was destroyed, or what became of it. Many fragments of the Scottish pine forests still remain; but even these have been very unmercifully slaughtered, in consequence of the high price to which Baltic timber arose during the late wars. There are still the remains of the Rannoch forest, on the confines of the great counties of Perth, Inverness, and Argyle. The roots that exist, and the occasional single trees and groups which may still be seen here and there, in situations not easily accessible, shew that this forest stretched far and wide across the country, meeting with those which now remain on the Dee, the Spey, the Findhorn, the Ness, the Beauly, as well as with those connected with the Glen-morna-albin, or great Caledonian Glen, and with the Glengarry, Lochiel, Glen Nevis, and more western sylvan districts. these remnants none were more extensive, or more esteemed for their timber, than the forests of the Spey and the Dee. The Abernethy forests still continue to furnish a great quantity of very fine timber. At one time the demand for it was so trifling, that the Laird of Grant got only one shilling and eightpence for what one man could cut and manufacture in a year. In 1730, a branch of the York Building Company purchased £7000 worth of timber; and, by their improved mode of working it up, by saw-mills, &c. and their new methods of transporting it in floats to the sea, they introduced the rapid manufacture and removal of it which afterwards took place throughout the whole of the sylvan districts. About the year 1786, the Duke of Gordon sold his Glenmore forest to an English company for £10,000. This was supposed to be the finest fir wood in Scotland. Numerous trading vessels, some of them above five hundred tons, were built from the timber of this forest; and one frigate, which was called the Glenmore. Many of the trees felled measured eighteen and twenty feet in girth; and there is still preserved, at Gordon Castle, a plank nearly six feet in breadth, which was presented to the Duke by the Company. But the Rothiemurchus forest was the most extensive of any in that part of the country. It contained above sixteen square miles. Alas! we must now,