284 Hbe <3ar&ett 



made for the disturbance of a year's crop at 

 most in a little corn ! whilst abandoning his 

 young woods all this time, and perhaps many 

 years, to the venomous bitings and treading 

 of cattle, and other like injuries, for want of 

 due care, the detriment is many times irrepar- 

 able, young trees once cropped hardly ever 

 recovering. It is the bane of all our most hope- 

 ful timber. 



But shall I provoke you by an instance ? A 

 kinsman of mine has a wood of more than sixty 

 years' standing. It was, before he purchased it, 

 exposed and abandoned to the cattle for divers 

 years. Some of the outward skirts were nothing 

 save shrubs and miserable starvelings ; yet still 

 the place was disposed to grow woody, but by 

 this neglect continually suppressed. The in- 

 dustrious gentleman fenced in some acres of 

 this, and cut all close to the ground ; and it is 

 come in eight or nine years to be better worth 

 than the wood of sixty, and will, in time, prove 

 most incomparable timber ; whilst the other 

 part, so many years advanced, shall never re- 

 cover : and all this from no other cause than 

 preserving it fenced. Judge then by this, how 

 our woods come to be so decried ! Are five 

 hundred sheep worthy the care of a shepherd ? 

 And are not five thousand oaks worth the fen- 

 cing, and the inspection of a hayward ? 



