We hope the above remarks will not be lost on those who have the management of the sowing, planting, and thinning of woods, and that they will always have selection in view. Although numerous varieties are derived from the seed of one tree, yet if that tree be of a good _breed_, the chances are greatly in favour of this progeny being also good. Scots fir of good variety will thrive and reach considerable size and age, in almost any soil which is not very moist, or very arid and barren (such as our sand and gravel flats much impregnated with iron or other deleterious mineral), provided the plants from their earliest years have room to throw out and retain a sufficiency of side branches. This is especially necessary to their health where the soil is {68} ungenial, the resulting vigour often overcoming the disadvantages. From the pine being found chiefly in the light sandy districts on the continent of Europe, and in the sandy pine barrens of America, an idea has gone abroad that these barren districts are more congenial to it than the more clayey, the more rocky, or the richer vegetable mould; but its natural location in the barren sandy districts results from its being more powerful in this soil than any other plant of the country, not from preference of this soil. Should any one doubt of this, let him take a summer excursion to Mar Forest, where no other tree having been in competition with Pinus sylvestris, and where it is spread over the hill and the dale, he will observe that it prospers best in good timber soil, and though comparatively preferring an easy soil, and having superior adaptation to thin or rocky ground, that its taste does not differ very materially from that of the plane or the elm, the oak or the ash.