his way from the British metropolis to his paternal estate at Glenlyon, in Perthshire. He travelled on horseback, after the fashion of the times, with his servant well mounted, and bearing his portmanteau behind him. On the top of the portmanteau was lashed one of the richest treasures for Scotland that ever passed the Tweed. It was a few foreign larch-trees, the Larix communis, or common white larch of Germany. These few trees this public-spirited individual generously distributed on his route to those persons in Scotland who would give them that care and trial which it was desirable they should receive. The course of a few years soon began to demonstrate their superiority over the old Scotch pine. Growing side by side, these vigorous strangers soon over-topped and looked down upon the aborigines of the soil. The difference in favor of the German larch was found to be immense. "It bears," says Sang, a celebrated forest manager, "the ascendency over the Scotch pine in the following important circumstances:—It brings double the price per foot, and arrives at a timber size in a half or a third part of the time. The timber of the larch at thirty or forty years is equal in quantity, and vastly superior in quality, to the Scotch pine of a hundred years. A larch-tree of fifty years growth has been sold for twelve guineas, while a Scotch pine of the same age, and from the same soil, has not brought more than fifteen shillings."
Towards the close of the last century, when the arts, commerce, and manufactures, began to rise in Scotland, her nobles soon learned to calculate the value of an abundant supply of useful timber. Happily the experiment had been tried, and the species of timber-trees best suited to the climate and soil of Scotland was already known. In the year 1796, more than five millions of larch-trees were raised by one nurseryman in Edinburgh. The Duke of Athol planted two hundred thousand every year for a number of years, and on one occasion he set out more than a million within the year. Nor was it merely planting. In the year 1820, this patriotic nobleman had the satisfaction of seeing a thirty-six gun frigate launched, built entirely of larch timber of his own raising. Throughout the British Isles, the larch has been
