The practice of planting this tree in groups is the cause to which its unfavourable character, as a picturesque object, may be attributed, the closeness of growth causing the stems to run upward without lateral branches. The hilly regions of the whole of Great Britain and Ireland were formerly covered with vast forests, a great portion of which consisted of fir-trees. Of these ancient forests some remains still exist; in Scotland, the relics of the Rannock forest, on the borders of the counties of Perth, Inverness, and Argyle, are well known: these consist of the roots and a few scattered trees, which are still found in situations of difficult access. This forest appears to have stretched across the country, and to have been connected with the woody districts of the west of Scotland. The Abernethy forest, in Perthshire, still furnishes a considerable quantity of timber. “At one time,” we quote Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart., “the demand for it was so trifling, that the Laird of Grant got only twenty pence for what one man could cut and manufacture in a year. In 1730 a branch of the York Buildings Company purchased seven thousand pounds’ worth of timber, and by their improved mode of working it, by saw-mills, &c., and their new methods of transporting it in floats to the sea, they introduced the rapid manufacture and removal of it, which afterwards took place throughout the whole of the sylvan districts. About the year 1786 the Duke of Gordon sold his Glenmore forest to an English company for 10,000_l._ This was supposed to be the finest fir-wood in Scotland. Numerous trading vessels, some of them above five hundred tons burden, were built from the timber of this forest, and one frigate, which was called the Glenmore. Many of the trees felled measured eighteen and twenty feet in girth, and there is still preserved at Gordon Castle a plank nearly six feet in breadth, which was presented to the Duke by the Company. But the Rothienmurchus forest was the most extensive of any in that part of the country; it consisted of about sixteen square miles. Alas! we must indeed say, it was, for the high price of timber hastened its destruction. It went on for many years, however, to make large returns to the proprietor, the profit being sometimes 20,000_l._ a year.” [Illustration: Leaves and Male Blossom of Scotch Fir.] [Illustration: Cone of Scotch Fir.] Besides the forest we have mentioned, there are still in existence other tracts of land in different parts of Scotland covered with this timber. The attention which has been drawn to the value of the Scotch fir has been an inducement to proprietors of land to cause extensive plantations to be formed on suitable spots; but Nature herself takes measures to perpetuate her work where the hand of man has carried destruction; for, after the old trees have been felled and carried off the ground, young seedlings come up as thick as in the nurseryman’s seed bed.