Book II. OF MIXING TREES. 579 



to plant oach sort in distinct nmasses or groups, provided the situation and quality of the 

 soil be properly kept in view. There lias liitherto been too much random work carried 

 on with respect to the mixture of different kinds. A longer practice, and more expe- 

 rience, will discover better methods in any science. That of planting is now widely ex- 

 tended, and improvements in all its branches are introduced. We, therefore, having a 

 better knowledge of soils, perhaps, than our forefathers had, can with greater certainty 

 assign to each tree its proper station. We can, perhaps, at sight, decide that here the 

 oak will grow to perfection, there the ash, and here again the beech ; and the same with 

 respect to the others. If, however, there happen to be a piece of land of such a quality, 

 that it may be said to be equally adapted for tlie oak, the walnut, or the Spanish chestnut, 

 it will be proper to place such in it, in a mixed way as the principals ; because each 

 sort will extract its own proper nourishment, and will have an enlarged range of pastur- 

 age for its roots, and consequently may make better timber trees. 



3675. By indiscriminately mixing different kinds of hard- wood plants in a plantation, 

 there is hardly a doubt that the ground will be fully cropped with one kind or other ; yet it' 

 very often happens, in cases when the soil is evidently well adapted to the most valuable 

 sorts, as the oak perhaps, that there is hardly oe oak in the ground for a hundred that 

 ought to have been planted. We have known this imperfection in several instances 

 severely felt. It not unfrequently happens, too, that even what oaks or other hard-wood 

 trees are to be met with, are overtopped by less valuable kinds, or perhaps such, all 

 things considered, as hardly deserve a place. Such evils may be prevented by planting 

 with attention to the soil, and in distinct masses. In these masses are insured a full 

 crop, by being properly nursed for a time with kinds more hardy, or which afford more 

 shelter than such hard-wood plants. There is no rule by'wl'ich to fix the size or extent 

 of any of these masses. Indeed, the more various they are made in size, the better will 

 they, when grown up, please the eye of a person of taste. They may be extended from 

 one acre to fifty, or a hundred acres, according to the circumstances of soil and situation : 

 their shapes will accordingly be as various as their dimensions. In the same manner 

 ought all the resinous kinds to be planted, which are intended for timber trees; nor. 

 should these be intermixed with any other sort, but be in distinct masses by themselves. 

 The massing of larch, the pine, and the fir of all sorts, is the least laborious and surest 

 means of good, straight, and clean timber. It is by planting, or rather by sowing them 

 in masses, by placing them thick, by a timous pruning and gradual thinning, that we 

 can with certainty attain to this object." {Plant. Kal. 162 and 166.) Our opinion is 

 in perfect consonance with that of Sang, and for the same reasons ; and we may add as 

 an additional one, that in the most vigorous natural forests one species of tree will gene- 

 rally be found occupying almost exclusively one soil and situation, while in forests less 

 vigorous on inferior and watery soils, mixtures of sorts are more prevalent. This may 

 be observed by comparing New Forest with the natural woods round Lochlomond, and 

 it is very strikingly exemplified in the great forests of Poland and Russia. 



3676. With respect to the appearance of variety, supposed to be produced by mixing a 

 number of species of trees together in the same plantation, we deny that variety is pro- 

 duced. Wherever there is variety there must be some marked feature in one place, 

 to distinguish it from another ; but in a mixed plantation the appearance is every where 

 the same ; and ten square yards at any one part of it, will give nearly the same number 

 and kind of trees as ten square yards at any other part. '* There is more variety," 

 Repton observes, " in passing from a grove of oaks to a grove of firs, than in passing 

 through a wood composed of a hundred different species, as they are usually mixed 

 together. By this indiscriminate mixture of every kind of tree in planting, all variety 

 is destroyed by the excess of variety, whether it is adopted in belts, clumps, or more 

 extensive masses. For example, if ten clumps bo composed of ten different sorts 

 of trees in each, they become so many things exactly similar ; but if each clump con- 

 sists of the same sort of trees, they become ten different things, of which one may here- 

 after furnish a group of oaks, another of elms, another of chestnuts, or of thorns, &c. 

 In like manner, in the modern belt, the recurrence and monotony of the same mixture 

 of trees of all the different kinds, through a long drive, make it the more tedious, in 

 proportion as it is long. In part of the drive at Woburn, evergreens alone prevail, 

 which is a circumstance of grandeur, of variety, of novelty, and, I may add, of winter 

 comfort, that I never saw adopted in any other place, on so magnificent a scale. The 

 contrast of passing from a wood of deciduous trees to a wood of evergreens, must 

 be felt by the most heedless observer ; and the same sort of pleasure, though in a weaker 

 degree, would be felt, in the course of a drive, if the trees of different kinds were 

 collected in small groups or masses by themselves, instead of being blended indis- 

 criminately." (Enquiry into Changes of Taste, ^c. p. 23.) 



3677. Sir William Chambers, and Price, agree in recommending the imitation of 

 natural forests in the arrangement of the species. In these, nature disseminates her 

 plants by scattering their seeds, and the offspring rise round the parent in masses or 



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