268 POLLARDING TREES. 



for the farmer.* It is by no means an uncommon thing, 

 to observe every ash tree in a hedge reduced to stumps 

 by successive pollardings. Many a landlord would 

 shudder at the thought of breaking up an old productive 

 sward, and not regard the topping of an ash ; whereas 

 this latter act is infinitely more injurious, ultimately, 

 than the former. The land may, and will probably, re- 

 cover, but the tree is lost for ever, as to any profitable 

 purposes for the owner. The farmer might perhaps tell 

 the agent when he remonstrated, that he must have 

 fire- wood, and hedging stuff; but the wants of the 

 former have decreased by the facility of obtaining other 

 fuel, and neither is to be supplied by the landlord at 

 such a ruinous subversion of present and future benefit* 

 I am not so silly as to enlarge upon the beauty of what 

 has been called " picturesque farming ; " but when we 

 cast our eyes over the country, and see such rows of 

 dark, club-headed posts, we cannot but remark upon 

 the unsightly character they present, and consider it 

 neither laudable to deform our beautiful country by the 

 connivance, nor proper attention to individual profit to 

 allow the continuation of it. The ash, after this mutila- 

 tion, in a few years become flattened at the summit, 

 moisture lodges in it, and decay commences, the central 

 parts gradually mouldering away, though for many years 

 the sap wood will throw out vigorous shoots for the 

 hatchet. The goat-moth now too commences its mordi- 

 cations, and the end is not distant. But the wood of 

 the ash appears in every stage subject to injury ; when 

 in a dry state the weevils mine holes through it ; when 

 covered by its bark, it gives harbor to an infinite variety 

 of insects, which are the appointed agents for the re- 

 moval of the timber : the ashen bar of a stile, or a post, we 

 may generally observe to be regularly scored by rude 



* The ash, generally speaking, will arrive at a very serviceable 

 age, in sixty years, producing at a low rate twenty-eight feet of 

 timber, which, at 2s. 3d. the foot, its present value, would produce 

 a sura equivalent to 3Z. 3s., a silent unheeded profit of above a shil- 

 ling a year. A hundred such might have been felled annually from 

 many farms had they not been topped, which, in consequence of 

 this practice have produced nothing. 



