are removed, has a tendency to diminish a bog which has been already formed.

Another requisite nearly connected with the above is the formation of paths for walking, riding, or driving through the future plantations. Where the woods are on a large scale, these paths should be at least eight or nine feet broad. This object is easily combined with draining, as the ditch which carries off the superfluous water will, at the same time, drain the road, if it is conducted alongside of it, which, in most cases, will be found the best line for both. Such roads serve at first to facilitate the collection of materials for fencing; they afterwards afford easy means of inspecting the condition of the wood, and, finally, of removing the felled trees from the woodland. When that occasion comes, the making such paths will be found indispensable, and as, if deferred till then, the object cannot be accomplished without a great waste of time, and the paths, after all, can never be so well lined as before the wood is planted, this preliminary season is unquestionably by far the most proper. It is needless to say that the formation and direction of such paths and drives is one of the most agreeable occupations of a proprietor who pretends to taste, and if barely formed with the spade, and drained, they will become, in a year or two, dry green sward, and require no metalling until they are employed in transporting heavy weights. But, whether formed or not, the space for such paths ought always to be left, and, among other advantages, they will be found to act upon

the forest like the lungs of the human body, circulating the air into its closest recesses, and thereby greatly increasing the growth of the trees.

We may now be expected to say something of the preparation of the soil, by cropping, fallowing, paring, and burning, or otherwise, as is recommended in most books on the subject of planting. There can be no doubt that all or any of these modes, may be, according to circumstances, used with the utmost advantage, especially so far as concerns the early growth of wood. Every plantation, therefore, which the proprietor desires to see rush up with unusual rapidity, ought to be prepared by one of these methods, or, which is best of all, by deep trenching with the spade. But the expense attending this most effectual mode limits it to the park and pleasure-ground, and even the other coarser modes of preparation cannot be thought of, when the object is to plant as extensively and at as little expense as possible. It may be some comfort to know that, as far as we have observed, the difference betwixt the growth of plantations, where the ground has been prepared, or otherwise, supposing the soil alike, and plants put in with equal care, seems to disappear within the first ten or twelve years. It is only in its earlier days that the plant enjoys the benefit of having its roots placed amongst earth which has been rendered loose and penetrable: at a certain period the fibres reach the sub-soil which the spade or plough has not disturbed, and thus the final growth of the tree which has enjoyed this advantage is often not

greater than that of its neighbour, upon which no such indulgences were ever bestowed.

The next important object is the choice of the trees with which the proposed woodland is to be stocked, and, supposing the production of tall timber trees to be the ultimate object, we would recommend, for the formation of a large forest, the oak and larch as the trees best to be depended upon.

Our choice of the first will scarce be disputed: it is the natural plant of the island, and grows alike on highland and lowland, luxuriating where the soil is rich, coming to perfection, in many cases, where it is but middling, and affording a very profitable copsewood where it is scanty and indiffer

ent.

Our selection of the larch may seem to some more disputable, but it will only be to such as are disposed to judge from outward show. We cannot, indeed, vindicate this valuable tree in so far as outward beauty is concerned: Wordsworth has condemned its formality at once, and its poverty of aspect. Planted in small patches, the tops of all the trees arising to the same height, and generally sloping in one direction from the prevailing wind, the larch-wood has, we must own, a mean and poor effect: its appearance on the ridge of a hill is also unfavourable, resembling the once fashionable mode of setting up the manes of ponies, called by jockeys hogging. But where the quantity of ground planted amounts to the character of a forest, the inequalities of the far-extended surface give to the

larches a variety of outline which they do not pos sess when arranged in clumps and patches, and furnish that species of the sublime which all men must recognise in the prevalence of one tint of colouring in a great landscape. All who have seen the Swiss mountains, which are clothed with this tree as high as vegetation will permit, must allow that it can, in fitting situations, add effectually to the grandeur of Alpine scenery. In spring, too, the larch boasts, in an unequalled degree, that early and tender shade of green which is so agreeable to the eye, and suggests to the imagination the first and brightest ideas of reviving nature.

If, however, in spite of all that can be pleaded in its favour, the larch should be, in some degree, excluded from ornamental plantations, still the most prejudiced admirer of the picturesque cannot deny the right of this tree to predominate in those which are formed more for profit than beauty. The good sense of the poet we have quoted, which is equal to his brilliancy of fancy, has, indeed, pointed out this distinction; and in the following passage, while he deprecates what we do not contend for, he admits the value of the larch in such rude scenes as we now treat of:

"To those," says Wordsworth, "who plant for profit, and are thrusting every other tree out of the way to make room for their favourite, the larch, I would utter, first, a regret that they should have selected these lovely vales for their vegetable manufactory, when there is so much barren and irreclaimable land in the neighbouring moors, and in other parts of the island, which might have been had for this purpose at a far cheaper rate. And I will also beg leave to represent to them, that they ought not

to be carried away by flattering promises from the speedy growth of this tree; because, in rich soils and sheltered situations, the wood, though it thrives fast, is full of sap, and of little value; and is, likewise, very subject to ravage from the attacks of insects, and from blight. Accordingly, in Scotland, where planting is much better understood, and carried on upon an incomparably larger scale than among us, good soil and sheltered situations are appropriated to the oak, the ash, and other deciduous trees; and the larch is now generally confined to barren and exposed ground. There the plant, which is a hardy one, is of slower growth, much less liable to injury, and the timber of better quality."

We willingly shake hands with our Miltonic poet, and enter into the composition which he holds out to the profitable planter.

In this capacity, being that which we now occupy, we have much to say in behalf of this same larch-fir. It unites, in a most singular degree, the two opposite, and, in general, irreconcilable qualities of quickness of growth and firmness of substance. In the first, it excels all trees in the forest, and in the second, equals the oak itself.

The mode of preparing or seasoning larch timber is not yet, perhaps, perfectly understood, more especially as the tree is usually cut in the barking season, when it is full of sap, which renders the large wood apt to warp and crack. To avoid this, some take off the bark the season before the tree is cut, upon which subject Mr Monteath gives us this practical information:

"In the summer of 1815 and 1816, I was employed to thin some plantations for James Johnstone, Esq., of Alva, on his estate of Denovan; and also in the same years, for Thomas Spot

1 Wordsworth's Description of the Country of the Lakes. VOL. XXI.

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