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ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM.

PART III.

and the Vosges. In Spain it is found, but not in great abundance; exceptin the form of the P. uncinata of Captain S. E. Cook, which we believe tobe only a mountain variety of this tree. In Britain, P. sylvestris is indi-genous to the mountainous districts of Scotland ; but it appears not to be soto England, though this may probably have been the case at some distantperiod; as Mr. Winch states that the roots and trunks of very large pinesare seen protruding from the black peat moss, at an elevation of nearly 3000 ft.in Yorkshire and Lancashire; cones are also frequently dug up out of the peatbogs, particularly in the latter county. (Seep. 21.) In Scotland, it growsat the height of 2700ft. on the Grampian Mountains; at the height of2300 ft. on Ben-na-Buird, in Aberdeenshire; and as high, or higher, on themountains near Loch-na-Garr. (Watson.)

In all these various situations, the Scotch pine is always found on soils dry,sandy, gravelly, granitic, or argillaceous, but least frequently on such as arecalcareous. The largest trees and finest timber in the Highlands of Scotlandare found on light hazelly loam ; on a cold, but dry, subsoil, generally graniticrock. The roots of the tree, in indigenous forests, run along the surface, andeven rise above it; and the tree seems to derive a great part of its nourish-,inent from the black vegetable mould formed by the decay of its own leaves.The wind frequently carries the seeds of this tree to marshy surfaces andpeat bogs ; but there, as Sir Thomas Dick Lauder observes, it is alwaysstunted in growth, and soon sickens and dies. In the higher parts of Aber-deenshire, in the vicinity of the Dee and the Spey, where the surface is themost elevated of any land in Scotland, it is only in the valleys, on the bordersof these rivers, and in the smaller vales on the banks of tributary torrents,consisting of alluvial soil, in the gentle slopes at the bottoms of the hills, orin the elevated recesses of the mountains, that the native pine thrives, andbecomes valuable timber. (Grant of Monymusk in Pontey’s Forest Pruner,ed. 3., p. 60.) The soil of the Forest of Braemar is a light gravel, formed of