HOW TO GROW' GOOD TIMBER. 



CHAPTER XL. 



ON THE VALUE OE TIMBER EOR ORNAMENT 

 AND PROEIT. 



Among all the varied productions (says Strutt*) with 

 which nature has adorned the surface of the earth, 

 none awakens our sympathies, or interests our ima- 

 gination, so powerfully as those venerable trees 

 which seem to have stood the lapse of ages — silent 

 witnesses of the successive generations of man, to 

 whose destiny they bear so touching a resemblance, 

 alike in their budding, their pride, and their decay. 



Hence, in all ages, the earliest dawn of civiliza- 

 tion has been marked by a reverence of woods and 

 groves; devotion has fled to their recesses for the 

 performance of her most solemn rites ; princes have 

 chosen the embowering shade of some wide-spread- 

 ing tree, under which to receive the deputations of 

 the neighbouring " great ones of the earth ;" and 

 angels themselves, it is recorded, have not disdained 

 to deliver their celestial messages beneath the same 

 verdant canopy. To sit under the shadow of his 



Introduction to " Sylva Britannica." 

 Y 



