3*0 Method of ascertaining the Value 



lease of thirty-one years of tins and the adjoining lands, and 

 willingly gave it up to be planted, on condition of having 

 the fences made and kept in good repair! 

 Five shillings a year, forborne 29 years, and improved at five 

 percent, compound interest, would amount to 15/. 1 Is. od. 

 But the value of the timber is more than twenty times this 

 amount. 



The trees were about two feet high, and planted at two 

 yards distance, in holes dug with the spade, 1210 on an 

 acre. Labour of making the holes and planting the trees 

 cost \l. 6s. \0±d. per acre. 



About 2700 were planted on an acre in the other planta- 

 tions, where the ground was wholly broken up. 



In the remarks on these three plantations, no notice is 

 taken of the thinnings. I am informed by gentlemen who 

 have kept accounts of thinnings, that these have repaid the 

 rent of the land and every expense, with compound interest, 

 6ome time before the woods were thirty years old; and the 

 preceding calculations show that it may be so. And if so, 

 the present value of these plantations is all clear gain. 



The valuer of these plantations has bought a good deal of 

 wood out of them ; and. the prices he has valued at per foot, 

 may possibly be a fair value there for such small timber. 



The growth of the firs in the last- mentioned plantation, 

 is probably as great in that poor ground as it would have 

 been had they been planted on ground of three or four times 

 its value; this must be a powerful inducement to gentlemen 

 to plant all such poor ground in the first instance. 



And a few of oaks, ashes, and firs, may be raised on al- 

 most every farm in screens, that may, by their shelter, in- 

 crease the value of the farm to the occupier, by increasing 

 the produce, particularly that of grass grounds. In this case 

 the interest of landlord and tenant may be reciprocal ; but it 

 is the reverse where trees are planted in hedge-rows. 



And even the sides and tops of high mountains may be 

 made abundantly more productive of grass, if certain por- 

 tions of them were surrounded by plantations. These planta- 

 tions, by breaking the force of cold winds, diminish their 

 chilling effect on the fields the plantations surround, and 



render 



