are sawed into stakes for supporting the nets with which sheep are secured when eating turnips off the ground, and immense numbers are wanted for this purpose on the verge of hilly districts. They fetch, generally, about a shilling per dozen. The larger larches make paling of various descriptions, gates for enclosures, &c., &c. For all these purposes, the larch is admirably calculated, by its quality of toughness and durability. The profits derived from these first thinnings can receive small addition from the produce of the Scotch fir, which will, at this period, be worth little else than what it will bring for fire-wood at the nearest village. But we must repeat, that even this first and least productive course of thinning will do more than clear the expense bestowed, in situations where the country can be considered as peopled.

There are, however, extensive Highland wastes, which of all other ground, we would most desire to see planted, where the improver must expect no such return. The distance of markets, the want of demand, deny that profit in the larch wildernesses of the North, which is derived from those more favourably situated, and where every stick, almost every twig, may be brought advantageously to sale. If, therefore, the plantations be as closely filled up in the former case as in the latter, one of two things must happen-either that the thinnings are made at considerable expense over a waste tract of wood-land, without any reimbursement from the proceeds; or else the plantation remains unthinned, to the unspeakable prejudice of the

wood, since no trees can thrive unless on the condition of removing a part, to give an additional portion, both of soil and air, to those which remain. This painful dilemma may be avoided by preserving such a distance betwixt the plants, when originally put into the ground, as will make thinning unnecessary, until they shall have attained a more considerable value. It has been found by experience, that larches in particular will grow very well, and even in situations of an unpromis ing character, if placed at the distance of ten or twelve feet from each other, and may therefore be suffered to remain for ten or twelve years without any thinning. The trees thus taken out will be from six inches to a foot in diameter; and, if no other demand occurs, a great quantity of them may be employed in forming internal enclosures in the wood itself, if, as in a large tract of forest ground and in a high country is often highly advisable, it is judged proper to restore a part of the land to the purpose of pasture. This has been a mode of improvement long practised by the Duke of Athol, in the north of Perthshire, where, to his infinite honour, he has covered whole regions of barren mountains with thriving wood, and occupied. with herds of black cattle, extensive pastures which formerly lay utterly waste and unproductive

A singular and invaluable quality of the larch-fir first remarked, or at least first acted on, by the patriotic nobleman whom we have named, has given the means of altogether appeasing the fears of those well-meaning persons, who apprehended

that the great extent of modern plantations might, in time, render timber too abundant in the country to bring any remunerating price, while at the same time it would draw a great proportion of land from the occupation of flocks or herds. The larch plantations are experimentally found, by the annual casting of their leaves, to lend material aid to the encouragement of the fine and more nutritive grasses; while, at the same time, they cause the destruction of the heath and other coarser productions of vegetation. The cause of this is obvious. The finer grasses-white clover, in particularexist in abundance in the bleakest and most dreary moors, although they cannot in such disadvantageous soil become visible to the eye, until encouraged by some species of manure. If any one doubts this, he may be satisfied of the truth, by cutting up a turf in the most barren heath in his vicinity, and leaving it with the heathy side undermost in the place where it was cut. Or he may spread a spade-full of lime upon a square yard of the same soil. In either case, the spot so treated will appear the next season covered with white clover. Or the same fact may be discovered by observing the roads which traverse extensive heaths, the sides of which are always greensward, although of the same soil, and subject to the same atmosphere, with the rest of the moor. The blowing of the triturated dust, impregnated with horse-dung, has in this case produced the same effect which the application of lime or the turning the turf, in the former experiments, is calculated to attain. The

clover, whether as a seed or plant our dull organs cannot discover, being thus proved to exist in the worst soils, and to flourish on the slightest encouragement, there is no difficulty in understanding how the larch-trees, constantly shedding their leaves on the spot where they are planted, should gradually encourage the clover to supersede the heath, and, by doing so, convert into tolerable pastureland that from which no animal excepting a moorcock could derive any species of sustenance. We understand the fact to be, that, by the influence of this annual top-dressing, hundreds, nay, thousands of acres have been rendered worth from five to ten shillings an acre, instead of from sixpence to, at the utmost, two shillings. Whoever knows any thing of the comparative value of heath and greensward pasture, will agree that the advantages of converting the one into the other are very moderately stated at the above ratio, and this wonderful transformation is made without the slightest assistance from human art, save that of putting in the larch plants.

If it is judged advisable to profit to the uttermost by this ameliorating quality of the larch-tree, the expense of the original plantation will be very considerably diminished, as it will be, in that case, unnecessary to plant any oaks in it, and the whole expense of setting it with larches alone, cannot, in such parts of the country as we are acquainted with, approach to twenty shillings an acre. this must be added ten years' rent of the field, which we may suppose, on an average, a shilling

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per acre, making, on the whole, an outlay of thirty shillings per acre. The cost of enclosing, and the loss of interest, are to be added to this sum.

No

other expenses have been incurred during these ten years; for the distance at which the trees are | originally planted has rendered thinning unnecessary until that space has expired. In the spring of the eleventh year, then, if the bark is considered as 1 an object, a general revising of the plantation takes place, when, probably, one-third part of the larches may be removed. It must be under very disadvantageous circumstances indeed, that four hundred larches do not, in bark and timber, repay all the expenses of fencing by any cheap method, together with the compound interest on the rent and the expenses of thinning. The acre, therefore, which has cost but thirty shillings for the larch woods, may, at ten years old, be occupied as pasture, without much danger to the trees, which cattle and sheep are not known to crop. For this sum the proprietor receives back his acre of land, with a crop of eight hundred larch-trees, twelve years old, which, valued but at three-pence a-piece, are worth ten pounds, but which may be more reasonably estimated at a much greater sum, and which, without costing the owner a farthing, but, on the contrary, increasing his income by thinnings from time to time, will come, in process of time, to be worth hundreds, nay, thousands, of pounds. At the same time, the larches have been, in a manner, paying rent for the ground they occupy, by the amelioration of the grass, which is uniformly so