Gretna Green to the borders of Northumberland and Berwickshire, this is the case. Passing into Scotland by the Cheviots, we saw extensive woods on the border lands of the Duke of Northumberland, Earl Tankerville, Mr. Collingwood, Mr. St. Paul, etc. The cold and wild tract between Kelso and Edinburgh presents cheering appearances of the extension of the planting spirit. In the counties of Argyle, Ross, and Inverness, which Monteith of Stirling, in his Forester’s Guide, particularly points out as wanting wood, we were struck with the great extent of planting already done. Every summer tourist up the Clyde sees how much the woods round Roseneath have sheltered and beautified it--and the woods around Inverary Castle are, to a great extent, very splendid--while all the way thence to Oban you pass through mountain glens and over moorlands enriched with woods. The Duke of Athol, about Athol and Dunkeld, has planted upwards of 15,000 acres. The Duke of Montrose has been a great planter. Sir Walter Scott was a diligent planter, as the young woods round Abbotsford testify; and there are no moments of his life in which we can imagine him happier than when mounted on his pony he progressed through his plantations at his leisure, with his pruning-knife in his hand. But what he did on his own estate is trivial to what he did by his writings. He may be said to have planted more trees by his pen than any man alive has with his spade. He himself tells us that the simple words put into the mouth of the Laird of Dumbiedikes, and placed as a motto at the head of this chapter, induced a certain Earl to plant a large tract of country. In the neighbourhood of Dingwall, Beuley, Beaufort,--from Inverness to Culloden,--in short, in almost every part of the Highlands,--you find extensive young woods of larch and pine. Many of these, it must be confessed, have apparently been made with more regard to profit than beauty. In many of the sweet straths, and along the feet of the mountains, the long monotonous reaches of larch--an unbroken, unvaried succession of pointed pyramids--present but an indifferent contrast to the free slopes of beauty which the native growth of the birches exhibits; dotting glens and embosoming lochs with a fairyland loveliness. As they become large, and are thinned properly, or rather, where they are planted thinly, on the plan of the Duke of Athol, this defect may be remedied. Scotch firs, when large, assume a wild forest majesty; and larches in mountainous situations, of an ancient growth, have an Alpine sweep of boughs that is extremely picturesque and graceful; but young crowded firs of any kind are too formal for beauty.