NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONSc 



SECTION I. 



Note I. Page 5. 



Whoever is acquainted with the pursuits and information of the gener- 

 ality of land-owners and country gentlemen, will be disposed to give full 

 credit to the assertion here made in the text, and also to the follow- 

 ing anecdote, which I shall mention, for the amusement of the reader. 



In the county of * * *, in which as large sums have been laid out in 

 Planting, as in most others, within the last half century, a gentleman, 

 who is curious and intelligent about Woods, and entertains the same 

 opinion of the generality of our planters as I do, was, some few 

 years since, remarking in a public company, the almost universal want of 

 science, or even of ordinary knowledge, that prevails on a topic so gen- 

 erally interesting. Not finding many persons agree with him in this 

 sentiment, he offered a bet of five to one, that no gentleman present 

 should, within three months, name three persons, landholders in the 

 county, who had executed large plantations, and were possessed of from 

 L.500 to L.5000 a-year and upwards, that were able to "state with 

 precision, the different sorts of soils, to which twelve of the principal 

 forest trees planted in Britain were best adapted." 



The bet was on all hands allowed to be a very " sporting" one, and was 

 immediately taken up. The taker of it next day set to work with 

 his search. Being no planter himself, though a good agriculturist, he 

 had no acquaintance with the subject in question ; but he naturally 

 enough imagined, that the species of knowledge, which was useless 

 to him, must yet be valuable to others ; and that therefore a planter 

 could no more be ignorant of the soils best suited to his trees, than 

 a farmer could be of those adapted to his wheat, or his barley crops. 



