"The planting of this forest appears to have terminated the labors of the duke in planting. He and his predecessors had planted more than fourteen millions of Larch plants, occupying over ten thousand English acres. It has been estimated that the whole forest on mountain ground, planted entirely with Larch, about six thousand five hundred Scotch acres, will, in seventy-two years from the time of planting, be a forest of timber fit for building the largest ships. Before being cut down for this purpose, it will have been thinned to about four hundred trees to an acre. Supposing each tree to yield fifty cubic feet of timber, its value, at a shilling a foot (one half the present value), will give £1,000 an acre, or, in all, a sum of £6,500,000 sterling."[ [4]
THE PINE-TREE, OR FOREST LIFE.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
The Pines.—White Pines: rank claimed for this Variety.— Predilections.—Comparison instituted.—Pitch and Norway Pines. —White Pine.—Magnitude.—New York Pines.—Lambert's Pine on Northwest Coast.—Varieties.—Its Rank.—Great variety of purposes to which it is devoted.—Great Pine near Jackson Lake.—Capital Invested.—Hands employed on the Penobscot.
After the foregoing brief notice of some of the most interesting trees, we come at length to consider that species which constitutes the theme of the following pages.
The Pine has been appropriately called the Monarch of the Forest. Taken all in all, it is the crowning master-piece of all woody plants. This avowal is made in full view of what has been said respecting other specimens of the vegetable kingdom. From early education, we are accustomed to regard some things as before others in point of merit, whether truth in the case would support our notions or not.
For trees we have our preferences. There is much of interest in every development of nature—much to admire, especially in the grandeur, the picturesque beauty, and sublimity of large forest trees. These things are so clearly defined in the mind of the botanist—so many excellencies does he discover in each genus, and every species of the respective families, that each succeeding description seems to place the last before every preceding one.