28 Home woods 



through is far better for effect, shelter, and the growth 

 of trees than the labelled and sticky ' Pinetum ', which 

 gives neither timber, shelter, nor beauty. In many 

 districts we see iron-bound clumps dotted over beautiful 

 ground, and worse than useless for effect ; also skinny 

 belts not deep enough to keep out the wind. As the 

 common ways of planting are so hopeless, what others 

 have we? Well, this is a question of district, of whether 

 the land is valuable or not, and whether it is rich plain 

 or rough upland. Large areas of land were broken up 

 in all parts of Britain when prices were good, which 

 ought never to have been broken up at all, and are not 

 fit for anything but timber. Think of ploughing with 

 four horses in clay land and expecting to get anything 

 back ! The same field which breaks a man growing corn 

 at the present prices would give a steady profit if well 

 planted. It is well, therefore, to plant cold and poor 

 fields, no matter what their shape, and from the first 

 year that we plant them we shall have some useful 

 covert. It is not only fields poor from coldness of soil 

 on the clay that are not worth cultivating, because some 

 light lands would be much better planted. 



Very often, in diversified country where the land is 

 not valuable, the old way of very small fields for the 

 stock has become almost useless for the present needs 

 of farming. If there are rabbits about, anything grown 

 in the field is eaten up, trees begin to spread in, and 

 there is often hardly room to swing a plough. Then it 

 is often a good plan to plant the whole of the field, suit- 

 ing the tree to the soil and taking care to bring in now 

 and then a change of tree. For example, in the wood- 

 lands south of London we often see hundreds of acres 

 without an evergreen tree anywhere. This cannot be 



