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of oaks, beeches, limes, sycamores, and horsecbestnuts. 

 Among them was one beech of the pendent species, a very 

 singular and valuable plant, which is worthy of an attentive 

 cultivation, and is rarely to be met with. The dimensions 

 of the trees were from five-and-twenty to five-and-thirty feet 

 high, and from ten to fourteen inches in diameter, or from 

 two feet six, to three feet six inches in actual girth. But, on 

 casting up the expense, my friend was both delighted and 

 surprised to discover, that, instead of L.2 and Zy.3, as he had 

 anticipated, they had not cost him quite 10s. per tree ! 



The last person, the evidence of whose practice I shall ad- 

 duce, is Sir Walter Scott, bart. ; whom to name, is to name 

 whatever is splendid in genius, versatile in talent, and correct 

 in judgment. This eminent individual has a place, beauti- 

 fully situated on the Tweed in Roxburghshire, near Melrose, 

 in the midst of those scenes of traditional and peculiar inter- 

 est, which have been illustrated and immortalized in his 

 writings. To the variety of attainments, for which Sir 

 Walter is distinguished, he adds the knowledge of arboricul- 

 ture. He is ardently, and I may say enthusiastically attached 

 to the cultivation of Wood. Though possessed of the pro- 

 perty only sixteen years, he has planted nearly five hundred 

 acres of surface ; and by the acknowledgment of all his 

 neighbours, few plantations are cultivated with the same 

 skill, and none have grown with more luxuriance, than the 

 woods of Abbots ford. 



There is no one, as may be imagined, of all the advocates 

 of the preservative system, who more freely and fully admit- 

 ted its utility, and its consonance to the law of nature, than 

 Sir Walter, as soon as its principles were made known to 

 him. Attached, though not bigoted to whatever belongs to 

 Scotland, perhaps he might regard the theory with an eye 

 the more partial, that it had its origin in his native country. 

 But neither his public functions nor his private studies have 

 allowed him much time to enter extensively into the practice 



