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indirecL road to our purpose, by enumcriiting the most com- 

 mon errors committed by planters, in their choice of subjects ; 

 and then by endeavouring shortly to account, from the laws 

 of nature, for the ill success that has attended such selection. 



The most common errors, which injudicious planters com- 

 mit, appear to be of three different kinds ; first, they bestow 

 no pains or care in the adaptation of trees to the particular 

 soils in which they are calculated to thrive ; secondly, they 

 have recourse to close woods and plantations, for the supply 

 of subjects ; and thirdly, they set out plants at too early an 

 age, and of too diminutive a size, into the open field. 



First; as to the non-adaptation of trees to their proper 

 soils. All plants, woody or herbaceous, seem to be fitted by 

 nature to grow best in particular soils and subsoils, in which 

 they thrive more luxuriantly than in others. This is a fact, 

 which is, or should be familiar to all planters. In other de- 

 partments, such as husbandry, it is universally understood. 

 No farmer of intelligence ever errs in adapting his crops to 

 the soils most proper for them, or puts his wheat or his beans, 

 where his barley or turnip should be put, or vice versa. Not 

 so, however, the planter ; for, nine times in ten, he pays no 

 regard to adaptation, but puts the same trees indiscriminately 

 on every soil. Even late practical writers of name and 

 authority advocate the practice, and recommend, that mixed 

 plantations of all trees should universally be made, with the 

 design, as they alledge, of producing " a greater weight of 

 wood," than by any other method. This is a system, which, 

 to say the least, sets little value on experience. In fact, it 

 equalizes all plants, and all soils at once, and renders all 

 judgment in treating them superfluous. 



But however such a method may succeed, in producing 

 mixed effects in plantations, it cannot l)e admitted for wood 

 in the lawn or park, in which the prominent effects are to 

 result from small groups or individual trees, and where, on 

 that account, every single failure tells, and appears conspi- 



