PREFACE. 



THE contents of this volume are the re- 

 sults of my own practice and experience 

 of half a century. Having commenced a 

 rural life at the age of one-and-twenty, I 

 have lived to see, in my seventy-first year, 

 trees planted by myself, and by others 

 under my own inspection, felled and sold 

 for the uses and purposes required by the 

 collieries and the numerous manufacturing 

 establishments of our own and the neigh- 

 bouring counties. He is highly favoured 

 who is spared to witness such results of 

 his own amusement and occupation in his 

 earlier days. To expect to see a greater 

 maturity than this, is vain indeed, in man, 

 the days of whose age are threescore 

 and ten. 



