timbers. Too much praise cannot be bestowed on his Grace in surmounting the obstacles which were continually thrown in his way by contractors and other interested persons, who endeavoured to prevent this important experiment from being made. A brig, of 171 tons, called the Sarah, has also been built at Perth, of larch timber, from the forest of his Grace the Duke of Atholl. The Diana steam-boat, which plies between London and Richmond, is also composed of the same timber; it was built by Evans of Rotherhithe.

The Duke has some beautiful cabinets formed of this wood, in his house in Great George-street, Westminster; and we have lately seen a table made from one of his Grace's larches, which, in point of beauty and closeness of grain, is nearly equal to those formed from the root of the yew-tree. In 1787, and the following year, the Bishop of Llandaff planted 48,500 larches on the high grounds near Ambleside, in Westmoreland. John Sneyd, Esq., of Belmont, in Staffordshire, planted 13,000 larches between the years 1784 and 1786, and 11,000 more in 1795. W. Mellersh, Esq., of Blyth, planted 47,500. Joseph Cowlishaw, of Hodsock Park, Esq., planted 27,400. Richard Slater Milnes, Esq., of Foyston, near Ferrybridge, in Yorkshire,

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planted 200,000, about four years old plants. In the same county, Mr. George Wright planted at Gildingwells 11,573. Thomas White, Esq., of West Retford, in Nottinghamshire, planted 13,000 about the year 1789. The late Earl of Fife planted 181,813 in the county of Moray, in Scotland. In 1791, the Rev. T. Dunham Whitaker, at Holme, in Claviger, in the county of Lancaster, planted 64,135; and in the same year Thomas Gaitskell, Esq., of Little Braithwait, in Cumberland, planted 43,300, on fifteen acres of high land. The same spirit for planting the larch has continued down to the present time, and extended to all parts of the country where the land has not been thought more valuable for other purposes. In 1820, the London Society for promoting Arts, &c., presented the gold medal to his Grace the Duke of Devonshire, for planting 1,981,065 forest trees, 980,128 of which were larch.

The larch-tree is now found to ripen its seed perfectly in England. The cones should be gathered about the end of November, and kept in a dry place till the spring; when, if spread on a cloth, and exposed to the sun, or laid before the fire, the scales will open and emit their seeds. These seeds should be sown on a border exposed to the east, whére

the morning sun only comes on it, as the plants do not prosper so well where the sun lies much on them. The young plants may be pricked out into other beds in the autumn as soon as their leaves have fallen off, and the is the space

distance of six inches each way recommended between them. In two years they will be ready to plant where they are intended to stand.

When the young trees are planted out for good, they need not be more than eight or ten feet distant from each other; but they must be planted closer on exposed situations : and it is recommended not to dig the ground between young larches; therefore the weeds should be drawn by the hand, or cut down by the hoe, whilst the plantation is young.

Plants which are intended for exposed situations should not be taken from warm sheltered beds, which naturally cause them to be more tender. It has been proved that those larches planted in the worst soil, and in bleak places, have thriven the best; for where trees of equal size have been planted in good earth at the same time, the others on cold stiff land have in twelve years been twice the height of those planted in good ground. The Bishop of Llandaff informs us, that from many experiments made by himself, and col

lected from others, he finds the annual increase in circumference of the larch, at six feet from the ground, to be one inch and a half, on an average of several years; and that this inference has been drawn from the actual admeasurement of larches in different parts of England and Scotland, and of different ages, from ten years old to fifty. Mr. Hart says, the larch grows slowly the first four years; but in twenty years it will exceed the fir-tree, both in height and circumference, that is double its age. Eight trees being measured in the spring and autumn of the year 1794, the average of their increase in height was nearly three feet nine inches and a quarter; and one of them increased three inches in circumference at two feet above the ground. In another plantation, the trees at eight years' growth measured above twenty feet in height on an average: the trees were from six to nine inches high when planted. At twelve years old they measured, on an average, from thirtyfour to thirty-six feet in height; and this increase is continued until the timber is nearly ready to be felled.

In the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Agriculture at Paris for 1787, there is an account of some birch-trees in some parts of

Dauphiné, and in the forest of Baye, in Provence, which two men could not grasp.

Of the qualities of the larch wood we have so much to add to what we have already stated, that should any one read our account who has plantations of this timber, and is not yet acquainted with its valuable properties, he will naturally seem to increase in riches as he proceeds from line to line.

Dr. Anderson says it is possessed of so many valuable qualities, that to enumerate the whole would appear extravagant hyperbole.

We have already noticed what the ancients have said of this timber's resisting the flames; in addition to which Mr. Hart observes, that there is perhaps no instance of the cottages in Carniola being set on fire, although their roofs are covered with boards of this wood, and they are so careless as to throw flaming firebrands on them. Matthiolus notices the incombustibility of this wood; but says, unwilling as it is to take fire, yet it is nowise difficult to burn it in kilns, glass-houses, and furnaces belonging to iron-works, when once the inside of these receptacles is rendered intensely hot. Such is the practice in the iron-works of Stiria and the bishopric of