148 



a gi\ en time ; and experience demonstiatesj that if we wait 

 that time, we cannot miss the produce. It is through haste 

 and impatience to anticipate the period, that we incur disap- 

 pointment. It is a well known fact, as they further alledge, 

 that, in the course of forty or fifty years, trees of considerable 

 magnitude may be raised, on almost any land in Britain, 

 that is of tolerable quality ; hence it must follow, that a 

 nobleman's or gentleman's park, which in general is supe- 

 riorly cultivated, will in all likelihood raise them in a less 

 lime. 



On such undeniable data, these operators often proceed to 

 fill a whole park with plants, taken from the nursery-ground, 

 of three, four, and sometimes six feet high. Great care is 

 bestowed in planting out the trees, and still greater expense 

 in securing them from sheep and cattle. Palings, hurdles, 

 cordage, according to the taste and consequence of the owners, 

 are all employed for that necessary end ; and those ponderous 

 and unsightly erections, when abundantly scattered over an 

 extensive and open surface, serve to fill the eye, and afford 

 a pleasing anticipation of what these stripling plants are 

 expected to do, at a future day. As to the expense of such 

 barricadoes (which will always last for five or six years,) they 

 hold it as insignificant, when compared with the formidable 

 cost of removing large trees. That cannot be accomplished, 

 they conceive, without heavy charges for men and machinery, 

 not to mention the contingency of a fortuitous art ; whereas, 

 with young and healthy plants, as they believe, you have 

 only to wait for a few years with patience, when success, as 

 in other things, must be the reward of industry. 



I once knew a gentleman, not destitute of talents or in- 

 telligence in rural affairs, who in this way had planted about 

 two-thirds of his place, which was of some extent, though 

 for the most part exposed to the west and southwest. When 

 I saw it, this arboricultural experiment had gone on for about 

 five-and-thirty years, and even the owner had, by that time, 



