The Story of our English Woodlands. 63 



Gravesend to Bridgend as " stripped like Maypoles, with only 

 a little tuft of leaves on the top." ^ This is a most barbarous 

 custom, he adds, destroys the beauty of the country, and is 

 absolutely ruinous to timber. It was a practice which 

 either owed its origin to a period when it was unlawful to fell, 

 but not to mutilate trees, or more probably to a mistaken 

 belief that the elm, the principal hedgerow tree in the south 

 of England, is improved by the process.^ The same writer 

 states that in the counties best adapted for the growth of the 

 oak, not one acre had been planted for fifty acres grubbed up. 



Sometimes, in their anxiety to arouse a national feeling for 

 arboriculture, the authorities exceeded the bounds of a wise 

 discretion. Towards the close of the session of Parliament 

 for the year 1789, application was successfully made in the 

 House of Commons to publicly reward Mr. Forsyth, the royal 

 gardener at Kensington, for the discovery of a composition 

 which cured the injuries and defects of trees. It was only 

 another form of those mud plasters recommended for the same 

 purpose by Evelyn, and was no better or worse a specific than 

 mortar, the ingredients of which, together with many other 

 useless elements of the rubbish heap, it contained.^ It was, 

 however, widely used and strongly believed in. The famous 

 Fairlop oak in Hainault Forest was, we are told, in its old age 

 protected from the public with a fence, and from the ravages 

 of time by a periodical dressing of Forsyth's composition, and 

 a legend nailed on one of its limbs ran as follows : " All good 

 foresters are requested not to hurt this old tree, a plaster 

 having been lately applied to his wounds." * 



The arboriculturist began about this period to dispute with 

 the husbandman the occupancy of the national wastes. Thus 

 on May 20th, 1791, a writer signing himself " Agricola," ad- 

 dresses the editor of the Gentlemmi's Magazine on the claims 

 of the larch to public consideration. He points out many hilly 

 tracts where it is too steep to plough, and too dry in summer 



^ Six Weelcs^ Tour, etc. 

 2 Annals of Agriculture, vol. v. p. 142. 

 » Vide Gent:s Mag., 1791, p. 567. 

 * Gent's Mag., Sep., 1791, p. 792. 



