CHAP, i S Y L V A 5 



to be left for twenty years longer, and to be enclosed 

 seven years. 



4. In sum, you are to spare as many likely trees 

 for timber, as with discretion you can. In the mean 

 time, there are some who find it not so profitable, to 

 permit so many timber-trees to stand in the heart of 

 copp'ces ; but on the skirts, and near the edges, where 

 their branches may freely spread, and have air, with- 

 out dripping and annoying the subnascent crop : 

 Nor should they be shread, which commonly makes 

 them grow knotty. This is a note of the ingenious 

 Mr. Nourse, as well as what he reports of a worthy 

 gentleman in Gloucestershire, to demonstrate how 

 one acre of copp'ce-wood on a plain, may contain as 

 much wood as two acres on the side of an hill ; 

 though that of the plain, as also the ground on the 

 side of the hill, might seem both alike planted, and 

 as thick in appearance. 



For comparing the order in which trees usually 

 grow on a plain, with those on a surface, they will 

 appear standing exactly in such a figure : So that if 

 the mountain be high and steep, one acre at the 

 bottom may contain four times the quantity of wood, 

 as an acre on the side of an hill, which is worth the 

 consideration. 



Now as to the felling (beginning at one side, that 

 the carts may enter without detriment to what you 

 leave standing,) the under-wood may be cut from 

 January, at the latest, till mid-March or April ; or 

 from mid-September, till near the end of November; 

 so as all be avoided by Midsummer at the latest, and 

 then fenced (where the rows and brush lie longer 

 unbound or made up, you endanger the loss of a 

 second-spring) and not to stay so long as usually they 



