“Proprietors should not attempt to raise seedlings, but purchase them from professional nurserymen, and place them in a succession nursery of their own. A proprietor may, in general, purchase seedlings much cheaper than he can raise them; while the case {332} is just the reverse with regard to plants of a greater age. In raising seedlings, much skill and attention is requisite, which the professional man can always command at a much more reasonable rate than the proprietor. In the treatment of plants after they are removed from the seed-bed, the rent of the ground is the chief source of expense, as any common gardener will be able to manage them.”
“A general, and a very gross error, in purchasing plants, is to consider those as best which are the largest in proportion to their age. This absurd principle of selection makes those nurseries most frequented by customers which least deserve to be so, such, namely, as are situated in the richest soils, surrounded by the closest shelter, and stimulated by the greatest quantities of manure. It is necessary, no doubt, that plants should be of a size to suit them to the situations for which they are intended; but if they have attained this size sooner than the due time by being forced, they are in the worst state imaginable for growing in a barren moor, or on the bleak side of a mountain.”
“Plants are often much injured, though raised sufficiently hardy in other respects, by being too much crowded in the nursery line.”—“The surest method that I know of enabling those who have little {333} experience, to ascertain whether plants, in the seed-bed, are too much crowded or not, is to compare such as grow on the verge of the alley with those in the interior. If the girt of the latter be equal, or nearly so, to that of the former, the plants have sufficient room.”—“When plants have stood for several years in nursery lines, if they are too much crowded, many of their lower branches will be sickly or withered, or the stems will be entirely devoid of branches, excepting within a few inches of the top. This is a mark so plain that no one can mistake.
“Care should be taken not to purchase plants which betray symptoms of disease. When larches not more than three years old cast the whole, or even the greater part, of their leaves, just when the winter commences, it is a sure sign that they are in an unhealthy state, and that many of them will die in the course of next season; for, under this age, the larch should retain a considerable quantity of its old leaves till spring.”—“There is also a minute white insect, which is fatal to the larch in plantations, that sometimes attacks it in the nursery after it enters its second year; on this account, it is proper to examine the larch plants the summer previous to purchasing them.”—“Scots fir maybe regarded as sickly, when the points of the leaves become withered, or {334} when they change their naturally dark colours into a faint yellowish green. Any vestige of withering on the spruce or silver fir, is a sure prognostication of approaching decay. Any kind of fir which has lost its leader may be considered useless.
“When plants are packed up in mats for the conveniency of carriage, strict orders should be given that those which carry their leaves in winter be taken up when they are entirely free from moisture. If they be pulled wet, they will heat and get mouldy in the packages. In the course of a few days good plants are often spoiled in this manner.”
Mr Cruickshank does not swerve from the common foolish system, of inculcating a determinate character of soil as generally necessary for each kind of tree. We are angry with the dulness of the writers on location of timber; they will not comprehend that a tree has two ends, by both of which it draws moisture, though from different elements, earth and air. The dullest clown is sensible he requires to drink more under an arid sun than under a drizzling rain. The same holds of trees; if there be little evaporation of moisture from the leaves, and if the leaves, instead of exhaling, can frequently even imbibe water, from the plant occupying an elevated situation, where the air the greater part of the season {335} is cool, and nearly surcharged with moisture, the most porous, driest soil (sufficiently damp in such a situation), will generally be the most suitable; and trees of every kind will prosper in sands, in which, under a dry atmosphere, they would not have survived one summer; whereas in arid, warm, low country, the deepest, dampest loams and clays are generally the best suited for timber, provided water does not stagnate. And, besides, we have found varieties of the same kind or species of tree, some of them adapted to prosper in dry air and soil, and others in moist air and soil. Although the above causes prevent a positive limitation of certain kinds of trees to certain soils, yet there are some which have superior adaptation to moist soils and others to dry; some whose roots, from their fibrous soft character, can only spread luxuriantly on light, soft, or mossy soils, and others, whose roots have power to permeate the stiffest and most obdurate. The above explanations will account for much of the incongruity which we find in authors regarding the adaptation of certain kinds of timber to certain soils.
In describing the soils suitable for different kinds of trees, Mr Cruickshank mentions, that “the Scots fir will thrive in very barren situations, provided the soil be dry. Dryness is, in fact, the {336} most indispensable requisite in order to produce a good crop of Scots fir, and it is never advisable to plant this tree in very moist ground, or where draining is necessary to carry off the surface water.”—“Stiff land seems decidedly hostile to its growth.”—“On a deep rich soil it grows very fast, attains a large size, and soon decays. In these circumstances, its wood is spongy, and of inferior value.”—“The most important precept that can be delivered with regard to this tree, is never to plant it either in wet or very stiff land.”
“The larch is also a very hardy plant, and is sure to thrive on any land that will answer for the Scots fir. It is, however, less delicate in its choice of soil than the latter, and will grow in a much greater degree of moisture.”—“This tree is one of the surest growers we have in barren soils.”
“The spruce is as partial to moist land as the Scots fir is to dry; and in this particular these two species stand directly opposed to one another.”—“Spruce may indeed appear to thrive in a dry situation for a few years; but by the time it reaches ten or twelve feet in height, its lower branches will decay, and after that period it will make little progress, but remain even a cumberer of the soil.”—“ Spruce seems to be most partial to a cold stiff clay: it is, {337} however, a very hardy plant, and not very nice in its choice of soil, provided it have enough of sap.”—“I do not mean such as is deluged in winter with stagnant water. This is incompatible with the growth of wood of every kind.”—“The silver fir and balm of Gilead will answer in the same kinds of land as the spruce.”—“They, together with the spruce, are invaluable for where the soil is deep peat-moss, as neither the Scots fir nor the larch will thrive in it.”
There is in the above quotations, in common with many of our opinions (formed hastily upon a too partial acquaintance with facts), a considerable proportion both of truth and error. Such sweeping assertions will, however, generally command the assent and admiration of the reader. From the enjoyment the mind has in forming clear conceptions and reaching conclusions, from its love of order, and from its disposition to cling to every thing like definite, unfluctuating arrangement, to assist its limited powers of comprehension, we are led away by the author, who reduces the character of natural phenomena to great simplicity, although in reality exceedingly complicated.
Scots fir, it is true, has rather a superior adaptation to dry, sharp, and rocky soils; yet there are many {338} situations of poor wet till and clay, and even peat-moss ground, where it will be advantageous to plant Scots fir in preference to any other kind of timber; for this plain reason, that no other kind will thrive so well in those cold moist moors. Both Larix and Abies have a much narrower range of adaptation than Pinus sylvestris. Larch will not thrive in the dead sand nor till flats of the low country, often not in the dead sand and till of rising grounds, in both of which the Scots fir, if allowed sufficient room for side branching, will reach good-sized timber. There is a considerable formation of peat-moss near Dunmore, in which the Scots fir has shown superior adaptation to the Norway spruce. We have also seen, in the moss of Balgowan, Perthshire, fine thriving Scots firs, many of them two feet in diameter, growing in very moist, rich, mossy loam,—so moist, that although in a rather protected situation, a number of the trees, while young, had been laid on their sides by the wind, and were growing luxuriantly in the form of a quadrant of a circle, with as much as six and eight feet of the stem upon the level ground, affording a curve sufficient to reach from the keel of a vessel to the deck at midships. We examined the timber of several of these, and found it superior to the average of home P. sylvestris. The superior {339} quality of the timber may be ascribed to the richness and moisture of the soil, and to the full branching of the trees from their rather open arrangement. There is nothing which conduces so much to the good quality of Scots fir as exposure. Under the great shelter of the close planted woods, the timber is soft and porous, without much resin; but under great exposure, especially to dry air, the timber is hard, close, and resinous. This is, however, considerably modified by the soil.
The quality of natural grown timber is considered superior to the planted. Is this occasioned by the former having generally more branches and leaves in proportion to the length of the stem, and being more exposed than the latter? Can root fracture at transplanting, or the kiln-drying of the cones, have any influence to diminish the strength of the fibre or quantity of resinous deposit? We have been told by several old people, in the neighbourhood of Dunsinane, that Scots fir plants, brought more than half a century ago from Mar Forest to Dunsinane Wood, succeeded much better than some which had been procured from nurseries, and also produced better timber.
Clay is assuredly not the proper soil for spruce and silver fir; their exceedingly numerous, soft, fibrous, moss-like rootlets, require an easy damp soil. {340} We have tried a number of kinds of abies, in both dry and moist clay, and have found they did not grow so luxuriantly (thrive so well) as Scots fir or larch. The silver fir shewed superior adaptation to any of the other kinds of abies.
Almost in every instance where we have seen the silver fir and Norway spruce (by far the best spruce for Scotland) growing together, the former was the superior. The timber, in the lower part of the stem, is harder than that of the spruce, but freer and more porous in the upper part. It is probable that the silver fir will not thrive in so elevated or so moist a situation as the spruce, but in all favourable soils it merits a preference.
We now come to a very important part of our author’s volume—an account of the most economical, and, as he says, the most successful, mode of planting moors and bleak exposed mountains, but which is brought forward by him under no limitation to place. To the invention of this method, our author lays no claim; he merely describes the practice in a clear and judicious manner.