MK. FOKSYTH OM GAME PKESEBVES AND FENCES. 203 



hungry home for game and birds of song ; for their fruits are 

 small and strong flavoured, and as for their flowers, they are still 

 less interesting than their fruits. 



Passing over the culture of Buck-wheat, Potatoes, Jerusalem 

 Artichokes, and such like herbaceous plants and culinary crops 

 usually cultivated to feed Pheasants, &c., as things too well 

 known to require any notice in a paper of this nature, I come 

 to the crowning plant for game cover, the Rhododendron, which 

 has hitherto been confined to the small and expensive patches of 

 the flower-garden and shrubbery; but which now seems destined, 

 and that at no very distant period, to skirt the moss and moor- 

 land by miles along the mountain path, and closing over the 

 mountain rill ; for as surely as Heather grows now in these loca- 

 lities, so surely will the Rhododendron occupy the same soil, 

 and thrive with equal luxuriance if it has an equal chance, 

 as I shall endeavour to show before I leave this subject ; but 

 I hasten to the consideration of the main question, namely, the 

 culture, and more particularly the propagation, of evergreen 

 shrubs for underwood in established plantations, where the an- 

 nual crop of acorns would go far to keep flocks of Pheasants, if 

 we could only contrive to eke out the supply of food during the 

 season when the acorns are growing, and could defend the game 

 from the weather and their enemies by a well-ordered plantation 

 of evergreen underwood. 



In by far the greater part of the existing forests, woods, and 

 plantations of this country, we find the land producing only one 

 useful crop, namely, timber trees. Now, the cultivation of 

 underwood, whether it be for profit, as in the case of crate-wood, 

 so important in Staffordshire, or for pleasure, as in ornamental 

 plantations and game preserves, seems the natural, and in many 

 instances the necessary accompaniment of tree culture. 



To insure the healthy development of timber-trees, it is neces- 

 sary that they should be kept sufficiently thinned so as not to 

 touch one another ; and if this be attended to, there will be 

 abundant space left for the cultivation of underwood : here then 

 I have succeeded in securing a place for my operations admir- 

 ably suited to the purpose, and one for which there seems no 

 other candidate. Now, if the trees are allowed to grow so close 

 as to choke the underwood, the plantation of timber-trees must 

 be already suffering irreparable injury ; and, on the other hand, 

 if the trees are thin and no underwood is cultivated, much land 

 must be idle, for it cannot produce good grass, and surely it is 

 high time to dislodge the Bracken Frond and the Bilberry bush, 

 which we generally find disputing the ground with an equally 

 unprofitable pair, namely, the Heath and Bramble. Now the 

 open patches of established woodland, where the rays of the sun 



