402 MISCHIEF ARISING FROM 



likely to suffer, from their producing the greatest 

 quantity of lop in the shortest time. The injury 

 done by this practice to the present landlord and 

 his successors is beyond estimation, as the numbers 

 destroyed, and the vigour of their growth, must be 

 first known : but there is not a farm of any extent, 

 from which hundreds of ash trees might not have 

 been felled, had their growth been permitted, 

 making an annual return ; whereas nothing can be 

 obtained now or hereafter for the proprietor, and 

 only a few stakes and bavins for the farmer *. It 

 is by no means an uncommon thing, to observe 

 every ash tree in a hedge reduced to stumps by 

 successive pollardings. Many a landlord would 

 shudder at the thought of breaking up an old pro- 

 ductive sward, and not regard the topping of an 

 ash ; whereas this latter act is infinitely more in- 

 jurious, ultimately, than the former. The land 

 may, and will probably, recover^ but the tree is 

 lost for ever, as to any profitable purposes for the 

 owner. The farmer might perhaps tell the agent 

 when he remonstrated, that he must have firewood, 

 and hedging stuff; but the wants of the former 

 have decreased by the facility of obtaining other 



* The ash, generally speaking, will arrive at a very serviceable 

 age in sixty years, producing at a low rate twenty-eight feet of 

 timber, which, at 2*. 3d. the foot, its present value, would produce 

 a sum equivalent to 3/. 3*., a silent unheeded profit of above a shil- 

 ling a year. A hundred such might have been felled annually 

 from many farms had they not been topped, which, in consequence 

 of this practice, have produced nothing. 



