Of Plantations. 493 



managed, are not only profitable, when times will admit of 

 profit to arise from that description of property, but they 

 are also ornamental in a high degree, and never cease to be 

 so, even immediately after the cutting and thinning processes, 

 if executed judiciously; because, when trees of so many varie- 

 ties, and of such different ages and growths, are intermixed, 

 no great number standing together, or near each other, 

 ever arrive at maturity, and require to be felled at the same 

 time ; consequently, no large gaps or wide vacant spaces 

 1 are ever perceptible in those woods, more than is necessary 

 to give light and air to the renewed trees, and to enable 

 them to shew their natural-formed picturesque heads to ad- 

 vantage. The landscape being occasionally enriched, by a 

 branching, rugged-topped old Scotch fir of the right sort, 

 standing prominent; while evergreen oaks, hornbeams, 

 horse-chestnuts, and other trees of medium growth, are inter- 

 spersed among the taller-stemmed timber trees. This is a 

 faint description of the present state, order, and condition 

 of the old woods in Holkham park. How much more pre- 

 ferable, in every respect, are mixed woods, such as those 

 here described, to groves, or dense masses of trees of the 

 same growth, without underwood or copse woods, and with- 

 out an intermixture of useful and ornamental timber trees ! 



On the Necessity of thinning Plantations, the rules to be ob- 

 served in managing that operation, and the means of reme- 

 dying the mischiefs arising from neglecting it. 



Plantations intended for mixed woods, however judicious- 

 ly they may have been planned and executed in the first 

 instance, never can be brought into proper order, and main- 

 tained in health and prosperity, neither will they ever be- 

 come ornamental, if the thinning process is not commenced 

 at an early period, and strictly attended to throughout the 

 whole progress of their growth. 



More plantations are ruined from neglect of thinning, than 

 from any other cause. It is a rare instance to see a planta- 

 tion thinned in a rational or profitable manner. The trees 

 are generally allowed to stand many years after planting, 

 however thick they may have been planted, without any 

 thinning whatever, otherwise than by wood stealers. The 

 soil becomes exhausted, and the'trees having, to a great ex- 

 tent, overtopped and destroyed each other, and the stems 

 of the survivors having been drawn up so tall, and so feeble 



