CHAP. I. 



ANCIENT WOODS. 



WHILE professionally employed, and while 

 passing from one part of the country to another, 

 my surprise has often heen great, when I have 

 witnessed, from its effects, the indifference which 

 many gentlemen manifest, as to the state and 

 management of this description of property : there 

 appears, in comparatively few instances, to be any 

 thing worth the name of an effort to rescue them 

 from that state of wild unproductiveness in which 

 they have been for ages ! One generation passes 

 away after another, and like as was the father, so 

 is the son and as was the agent of the former, so 

 is the agent of the latter ! All they have done for 

 ages gone by, they do now, and little or nothing 

 more. They calculate, with tolerable accuracy, 



