OF ARBORICULTURE IN YORKSHIRE. 145 



is concerned, than it has now. At that time it was only mature 

 timber that brought any considerable price — tbat is to say, trees that 

 had occupied the ground for eighty or a hundred years ; so that 

 a proprietor had no chance of planting and reaping the benefit in 

 his own lifetime — the work done was for the future benefit of the 

 estate. Now, however, the case is different ; there is a great 

 demand for pit prop-wood in the country, for which trees are suit- 

 able at from twenty to thirty-six years' growth, and larch even at an 

 earlier age. So that on the class of land we have specified, after 

 trees had grown for thirty years, if they were cut down, the price 

 obtained for them would well repay the cost of rearing them, and 

 the rent for the ground occupied, — a fact which may be gathered 

 from the prices quoted at page 143. The advancement made in 

 arboriculture would probably have been much greater, but for the 

 very men who pretended to promote it. So many extravagant expec- 

 tations were held out which could never be realised ; so many calcula- 

 tions based on unsound foundations ; so many enthusiastic dreamers, 

 who buoyed up proprietors for a short time by leading them to expect 

 a speedy fortune by planting land which formerly gave little or no 

 return. A short time, however, unfolded the deception, and no 

 doubt caused many planters to abandon the operation in disgust. 



As illustrating such writers, I cannot do better than quote 

 from " Cobbett's Woodlands," published in 1825 :— " The time 

 will come, and it will not be very distant, when the locust tree 

 (Robinia Pseud-Acacia) will be more common in England than the 

 oak ; when a man would be thought mad if he used anything but 

 locust in the making of sills, posts, gates, joists, feet for rick-stands, 

 stocks, and axle-trees for wheels, hop-poles, pales, or anything 

 where there is liability to rot. This time will not be distant, seeing 

 the locust-tree grows so fast. The next race of children but one, 

 that is to say, those who will be born sixty years hence, will think 

 that locust-trees have always been the most numerous trees in Eng- 

 land ; and some curious writer of a century or two hence will tell 

 his readers that, wonderful as it may seem, the locust was hardly 

 known in England till about the year 1823, when the nation was 

 introduced to a knowledge of it by William Cobbett." 



It is nearly half a century since these words were written ; how 

 far they have been accomplished the reader may judge for himself. 

 They serve to show how little dependence is to be placed in specu- 

 lative writing, dealing with future events, unless there is a sure 

 basis on which to rest one's calculations. 



