374 



means digging it with the spade, for a few years, that is, in situations 

 where the nature of the ground will admit, and where sufficient manure 

 for a green-crop can be procured. Having for many years successfully 

 followed this method myself, I can with the greater confidence recom- 

 mend it to others. But from the very nature of the thing, it is evident 

 that it cannot be adopted for General Planting, or ever come into 

 universal use. All men, however, will admit, that Mr. "Withers is 

 entitled to great praise, for so earnestly pressing it on the public atten- 

 tion. 



There is one thing, at which I have been rather surprised, in Mr. 

 Withers's pamphlet, and which cannot be passed over Avithout notice, 

 by any person of intelligence, and that is, his denominating the ordinary 

 or pitting method of planting, as every where practised, without any 

 previous deepening of the soil, " the Scotch system ;" and for no other 

 alleged reason that I can discover, on the most attentive perusal of his 

 publication, than that some Scotch contractors had executed about forty 

 acres of plantation for Admiral Windham, according to this method, and 

 that the thing had turned out "a total failure." 



It is certainly very candid in Mr. Withers to inform us, that he knows 

 nothing of Scotland or Ireland, and that his observations on wood, and 

 his practice in raising it, are wholly confined to Norfolk. His pamphlet 

 as clearly informs us, that he knows nothing of general planting, or of 

 its history and progress in Britain, and the rest of Europe ; and that the 

 anatomy of plants and vegetable physiology have not come within the 

 range of his studies. Now, in these circumstances, it would have been 

 as well, if he had not insisted on it, that the common and well-known 

 style of executing general planting, in every country where it is known 

 and cultivated, is peculiarly " the Scotch method ;" because the En- 

 glish, Irish, French, German, or any other national epithet, would have 

 equally designated the practice. The Germans have about a hundred 

 writers on Woods and Forests (double the number that Varro enumerates 

 in his time), among whom M. Biirgsdorf, Master General of the Forests 

 of Prussia, and M. Hartig, who held the same situation in the princi- 

 pality of Solms, are the most celebrated. The French, in the same 

 way, have nearly thirty authors on this subject, of whom MM. De 

 Perthuis, Baudrillart, and Varenne-Fenille are the latest and best. 

 These, together with our own Evelyn aud Cooke, Miller, Pontey, and 

 Speechley, all treat of both the trenching and the pitting method ; but 

 not one of them ever made the notable discovery, which has been made 

 by Mr. Withers, that the latter is peculiarly the Scotch method. On 

 the contrary, they all mention both systems, as practised in their diffe- 



