running up from the shore of Loch Arkaig for five miles, and in it there is one tree, even larger than that last mentioned, of which Mr. Ellice has sent me a sketch. At the narrowest part of the trunk, three feet from the ground, this tree measures 18 feet 8 inches in girth, and at about 10 feet divides into three tall trunks, each of which girths between 11 and 12 feet. Just below this fork it girths about 30 feet, and appears to be sound throughout.
At Novar, in Ross-shire, there is an old plantation containing a number of very fine Scots pines, one of which measures 105 feet by 10 feet 3 inches, aug larger ones can probably be found in this district, as well as in the sandy district which extends east from Inverness, where many large plantations of this tree flourish exceedingly.
The finest individual trees and the finest Scots pine plantation that I have seen is in a place called Wishart’s Burn, near Gordon Castle, Banffshire, on red sandstone soil. Though supposed to be about 180 years old, most of the trees are still in good health and quite sound, though wind has made some gaps in the plantation. When I visited them in April 1904 the tallest tree was about 117 feet high by 10 feet 11 inches in girth. It forks at about 45 feet, but carries its girth so well that the bole would, I think, measure 45 feet by 28¼ inches quarter girth, about 245 cubic feet, and the tops might contain 50 feet each, making a total of 345 cubic feet (Plate 164). Another tree standing near it was 114 feet by 8 feet 10 inches, and I estimated that the older trees here average over 100 feet high by 8 feet in girth. Mr. Webster, gardener to the Duke of Richmond, who showed me this beautiful spot, agreed with me that the average number of trees to the acre here was about sixty, and their average contents about 100 cubic feet; but many have been cut and sold at as much as £7: 10s. each, to make masts for large herring boats. One of these trees probably is the one figured by Loudon (p. 2162) as a model of a fine Scots pine clear of branches to 50 feet, and containing 260 feet of timber.
There are also very fine plantations of Scots pine in the neighbourhood of Castle Grant, the seat of the Dowager Countess of Seafield, in Inverness-shire, a place celebrated for its good forestry, and where better examples of thickly grown self-sown pine may be seen than anywhere else in Scotland. Mr. Grant Thomson, who has had charge of the extensive woods here for forty-five years, told me that the oldest planted trees are about 180 years old; many of these are 80 to 90 feet high and 8 feet in girth, and number sixty to seventy per acre. Some have already begun to decay at the heart, and it was noticeable that on the thick bed of decayed pine needles under them seedlings would not grow. This has been referred to by Prof. A. Schwappach in a paper on the “Forests of Scotland” in Trans. Roy. Scot. Arbor. Soc. xv. 13 (1898).
In this neighbourhood are the most celebrated and extensive natural forests of Scots pine in Great Britain, which I visited in April 1904. Glenmore forest, the property of the Duke of Richmond, was perhaps the best of these until 1783, when a great part of the mature timber was sold to an English merchant named Osbourne, who cut it down in twenty-two years and floated the timber to Spey-
