296 On the Planting of Forest-Trees, 



The amount of 100/. at compound interest merely, will at the 

 end of 60 years be only 1867/. It will appear by referring to 

 the calculation, that 211. lis. Sd. expended in the purchase and 

 planting an acre of land, will produce at the end of sixty years 

 1446/. ; therefore 100?. will in the same period amount to 6702/., 

 which sum is worth in present money 358?. lis. Id., the sum 

 with which Table No. 2 commences. These tables are calcu- 

 lated with sufficient accuracy for the purpose intended, and, toge- 

 ther with the estimate of the produce of an acre of planted land 

 upon which they are founded, place in a strong light the great 

 profit to be expected from planting, even after making every al- 

 lowance that the most scrupulous caution can suggest. 



Plantations in elevated and exposed situations should always 

 be in large masses, by which plants afford each other more shelter, 

 and the expense of fencing is most materially diminished. With 

 regard to the shelter afforded by plantations to the adjoining 

 land, it might safely be affirmed that if one-fifth of a very exposed 

 estate were planted in such a manner as to afford the most 

 effectual shelter, the climate of the remaining land would be so 

 much improved, as to render it more valuable than the whole was 

 before. The improvement effected by a larch plantation is most 

 strikingly manifested by the following memorandum of the Duke 

 of Athol, inserted in the Reports of the Highland Society : — " I 

 ordered this month (May) 150 head of cattle to be turned out 

 into the larch plantations at Blair till the grass in the parks got 

 up — thirty years back the same hill would not have afforded 

 pasture for ten." This was the combined effect of shelter and 

 the improvement of the soil. As trees derive almost the whole of 

 their substance from the air, a proprietor of plantations has the 

 agreeable satisfaction of reflecting that by planting he has created 

 a condition, an infallible means, by which the common unappro- 

 priated bounty of Nature, the treasure of the viewless winds, is 



