152 



ten, fifteen years, or more, in a stationary condiiion, strug- 

 gling, under the unpropitious circumstances of cold and 

 exposure, to generate provisions, which they should previ- 

 ously have acquired ; when at length, having overcome the 

 evils of injudicious selection, they only then begin to make 

 that progress, which ignorance and mismanagement have 

 retarded.* 



On the other hand, if his object be to raise close masses of 

 wood (for hiding, for example, some prominent defect, or 

 attaining some general ornamental purpose,) of which mass- 

 es the materials are to consist of grove-wood and copse 

 intermixed, it is evident, that, excepting perhaps, for the 

 outside rows, the protecting properties would be altogether 

 tlirown away on such designs. If what has been said 

 above be well founded, trees possessing those properties 

 would, in this situation, soon have them exchanged for the 

 non-protecting, by the heat and shelter, which a close mass 

 of wood must always generate. Even were not that to hap- 

 pen, the needless extension of both their branches and roots 

 would prove extremely injurious to a plantation, where un- 

 derwood predominated. In these circumstances, an operator 

 of judgment would select such subjects for his work, as 

 possessed the non-protecting properties exclusively, and were 

 far more suitable to the designs in question. 



These, however, may be considered as extreme cases, 

 while ordinary practice lies in a medium between the two. 

 Thus, in parks or places of any extent, the climate and soil 

 arc usually as various, as the proportions of the protecting 

 properties, which have been acquired by different trees. 

 The tree, which would succeed in the sheltered valley, 

 would have little chance on the exposed eminence ; and to 

 transfer a subject well adapted to the latter to the former 

 site, would be to misapply qualities, which are so extremely 



* Note I. 



