Loch Ossian Plantations Book - Gift to Simon
The book is owned by David Paterson, Edinburgh, who has provided the image and also that of the inscription inside written by Sir John Stirling Maxwell in his later years to his long term head forester Simon Cameron.
The inscription reads (see large image):
‘Simon – with love and gratitude from his friend the Author June 26 1951’
The year appears to read as 1957 but Sir John died in 1956.
David writes:
This is a remarkable book, Mark Anderson knew Sir John, of course and work of Steven and Anderson on the Lon Mor was obviously drawing on Corrour at first. The initial approach for the West highlands and northern sites like Borgie was Sitka spruce in the bottom, Norway spruce upper and Scots pine on the heathery ground. The Sitka spruce got severely frosted and checked, the exposed Norway spruce was miserable and the Scots pine fragile without phosphate.
A M Fraser told me about his reclamation at Achnashellach, Strome, Slattadale during 1939-45 period using Lodgepole pine and re-application of phosphate and upgrading drainage.
One thing that I learned when doing the forest inventory in 1952 at Loch Ossian was to be suspicious of the tree identification and Sir John’s book provides the evidence as to why this was the case.
We have been so lucky to be in touch with the original silviculturists from the Beauly Forestry School and right from the beginnings of the FC Scotland – Mark Anderson, J A B Macdonald, George Stewart, James Fraser, Frank Oliver (I had little to do with Stevens) and being inducted into reclamation of checked early plantings by Alistair Fraser as my first District Officer supervisor. They were all a pretty green fingered bunch and ‘hands on’ foresters.’
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