138 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



standing at euery fall, vpon an acre." Even in the 

 farmer's own interest, Tusser, in his book on husbandry, 

 advises to — 



Leaue growing for stadles the likest and best, 

 Though seller and buier dispatched the rest. 

 In bushes, in hedgerovve, in groue, and in wood, 

 This lesson obserued is needful and good. 



It is curious in these latter days, when we are a 

 little anxious about the duration of our coal supply, to 

 find in Norden's book that one great cause of the 

 destruction of timber was its employment as fuel for 

 various manufactures. Sussex, now so purely agricultural, 

 had, when he wrote, one hundred and forty hammers 

 and furnaces for the smelting of iron, consuming " each 

 of them in euery 24 houres 2, 3 or foure loades 

 of charrcoale," while " in Surry adjoyning " there were 

 three thousand four hundred "glasse-houses " equally 

 exigent. 



The importation of timber from abroad to supply 

 our own necessities is not by any means a proceeding 

 of yesterday merely, or the day before, for we find Hartlib 

 lamenting, in 1659, the great dearth of home-grown 

 timber. He writes, " It is a great fault that generally 

 throughout the Island the Woods are destroyed, so that 

 we are in many places much necessitated for fuel and 



felled. This Statute was confirmed and stiffened in tlie reign of Elizabeth, 

 but we find Harrison complaining that " Within these fortie yeeres we 

 shall have little great timber growing, for it is commonlie seene that those 

 yong staddles which we leaue standing are vsuallie at the next sale cut 

 downe without any danger of the Statute, and serue for fire bote, if it 

 please the owner to bume." Austin, writing in 1657, reminds the law- 

 makers and law-breakers of a salutary "law in Spaine, that he that cuts 

 downe one tree, shall plant three for it." 



