No man can tell. For when last the Scotch fir was indigenous to England, and, mixed with the larch, stretched in one vast forest from Norfolk into Wales, England was not as it is now. Snowdon was, it may be, fifteen thousand feet in height, and from the edges of its glaciers the marmot and the musk ox, the elk and the bear, wandered down into the Lowlands, and the hyena and the lion dwelt in those caves where fox and badger only now abide. And how did the Scotch fir die out? Did the whole land sink slowly from its sub-Alpine elevation into a warmer climate below? Or was it never raised at all? Did some change of the Atlantic sea-floor turn for the first time the warm Gulf Stream to these shores; and with its soft sea-breezes melt away the ‘Age of Ice,’ till glaciers and pines, marmots and musk oxen, perspired to death, and vanished for an æon? Who knows? Not I. But of the fact there can be no doubt. Whether, as we hold traditionally here, the Scotch fir was re-introduced by James the First when he built Bramshill for Raleigh’s hapless pet, Henry the Prince, or whatever may have been the date of their re-introduction, here they are, and no one can turn them out. In countless thousands the winged seeds float down the south-west gales from the older trees; and every seed which falls takes root in ground which, however unable to bear broad-leaved trees, is ready by long rest for the seeds of the needle-leaved ones. Thousands perish yearly; but the eastward march of the whole, up hill and down dale, is sure and steady as that of Lynceus’ Goths in Goethe’s Helena:— ‘Ein lang und breites Volkegewicht, Der erate wusste vom letzen nicht. Der erste fiel, der zweite stand, Des dritten Lanze war zur Hand, Ein jeder hundertfach gestärkt; Erschlagene Tausend unbemerkt—