coarser, and less durable than that from North Germany, Russia, and Scandinavia; whilst over-thinning causes it to be much more knotty. It is hardly possible to believe that the same tree can produce timber so different as examples which I showed at a lecture on English timber at the Surveyors' Institute, on 22nd February 1904, taken from an immense tree grown at Powerscourt, of about 12 feet in girth; and the beautiful fine-grained wood which I brought from Northern Norway, and which when well planed shines with a silky gloss. Every intermediate form may be found in this country; but, as a rule, it is little valued in England except for mining timber, for cheap fencing, packing cases, and other uses. In Scotland, where it is as a rule slower grown, and better in quality, its value is kept down by foreign importations, though it is very largely used in making staves for herring barrels and many other purposes.
But when old enough to have produced a large proportion of red heartwood, and free from knots, I have sold Scots pine for as much as 8d. per foot, and have found it very useful and durable timber for roofing and many other estate purposes; and I am informed by Mr. Mitchell, forester to the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, that in that neighbourhood, where it is of good quality, it is largely used for rending lath, and that the buyers will give a high price for it when suitable for that purpose.
Loudon gives many interesting particulars of the uses and quality of pine timber at home and abroad, and quotes[1] Mr. T. Davis who, in 1798, was the Marquess of Bath's forester at Longleat, to the effect that a cart-house, built from it on that estate, remained perfectly sound after eighty years' use. And Pontey, in his Forest Primer, published in 1805, also defends the Scots pine against the "almost universally prevalent prejudice against it, which is no doubt based partly on ignorance and partly on the fact that it is often used when too young and unseasoned."
But, whatever may be said against the wood when grown in the south of England, there can be no question that the Highland native pine timber, when clean, is a valuable, and in some cases also a very ornamental timber. I have seen at Castle Grant a very beautiful sideboard made on the estate, which showed the curiously twisted red and yellow grain which Mr. Grant Thomson tells me is only produced by the self-sown native trees; and I am indebted to the kindness of Lady Seafield for some of the same wood, which was cut in the Forest of Abernethy. The entrance hall and a room at Balmoral Castle have been recently panelled with the same sort of wood, which has a very ornamental effect, and Mr. Michie tells me that it has also been largely used for internal decoration in Mar Lodge. I saw in the house of the postmaster of Bodé, in Norway, a very handsome table made from a variety of the wood, which is there called "Rie," and which seems to be caused by a disease in the tree producing excrescences and distortion in a part of its trunk, and I possess a piece of this wood which is so unlike pine wood that no one could recognise it as such. But these trees seem to be as rare in Norway as in Scotland, and command a high price locally.
The oldest example of this wood in the form of panelling that I have seen or heard of is in the room known as Queen Mary's room in Castle Menzies, which was
- ↑ Op. cit. 2168.
