There is much truth in these remarks, and they cannot be too much borne in mind by all planters where picturesque beauty is an object. On dreary moors, where the larch is planted merely for profit, and where the _tout-ensemble_ cannot readily be attained, woods of it often present a great degree of pleasantness by contrast. They give you green glades and narrow footpaths, between heath and fern, their slender boughs hanging above you, especially in the freshness of their foliage, very agreeably. As a matter of profit, and for the value of its timber, few species of wood can compete with it. The following extract from the Transactions of the Highland Society, gives a very striking view of its importance. “Larch will supply ship-timber at a great height above the region of the oak; and while a seventy-four gun ship will require the oak timber of seventy-five acres, it will not require more than the timber of ten acres of larch; the trees, in both cases being sixty-eight years old. The larch, at Dunkeld, grows at the height of 1300 feet above the level of the sea; the spruce at 1200; the Scotch pine at 700; and deciduous trees at not higher than 500. The larch, in comparison with the Scotch pine, is found to produce three and three-quarter times more timber, and that timber of seven times more value. The larch also, being a deciduous tree, instead of injuring the pasture under it, improves it. The late Duke of Athol, John the Second, planted in the last year of his life, 6500 Scotch acres of mountain ground solely with the larch, which in the course of seventy-two years from the time of planting will be a forest of timber fit for the building of the largest class of ships in her majesty’s navy. It will have been thinned out to about 400 trees per acre. Each tree will contain at the least fifty cubic feet, or one load of timber, which, at the low price of one shilling the cubic foot, only one half of its present value, will give 1000_l._ per acre, or in all, a sum of 6,500,000_l._ sterling. Besides this there will have been a return of 7_l._ per acre from the thinnings, after deducting all expense of thinning, and the original outlay of planting. Further still, the land on which the larch is planted, is not worth above ninepence or one shilling per acre. After the thinnings of the last thirty years, the larch will make it worth at least ten shillings per acre by the improvement of the pasturage, on which cattle can be kept summer and winter.” That is pretty well. This calculation is made upon land stated at 1_s._ per acre, planted with larch; but Monteith, an experienced timber planter and valuer, gives us for oak planted on land of 1_l._ per acre yearly rent, the following statement.