380 



his laurels, and anxiously inquire, whether the promised timber will be 

 of the BEST QUALITY ■? For "good marketable wood," which Mr. Wi- 

 thers clearly may raise, and raise speedily, would hardly satisfy his 

 majesty's commissioners of woods and forests, for the important purpose 

 of constructing British Ships of War. Whether high cultivation and 

 manuring should now be introduced over the whole royal forests, because 

 Mr. Withers in Norfolk is raising good wood by that method, and has 

 ■written two successful pamphlets on the subject, is a question of some 

 public interest. I must say, it is a method of obtaining the 7nost dura- 

 ble oak-timber, which is certainly new, and is contradicted by all exist- 

 ing facts, as well as all former practice. Those facts, therefore, are 

 deserving of a short consideration, which is all that the limits of the 

 present discussion will admit. 



The effects of Culture on the whole kingdom of vegetables (as the 

 author of the Encyclopedia of Gardening well observes), are so great, as 

 always to change their appearance, and in a considerable degree to 

 change their nature. Culture, as phytologists admit, has nearly the 

 same tendency towards affecting the growth of plants, as the removing 

 of them to a better climate, by expanding the parts of the entire vege- 

 table. To any one at all acquainted with vegetable economy this is 

 well known, and it is remarkable in all culinary vegetables and cultivated 

 grasses, which assume an appearance in our gardens and fields, widely 

 different from that, which they display in their wild or natural state. 

 In the same manner, the absence of culture, or the removing the vege- 

 table to a colder climate, and a worse soil, tends to contract or consolidate 

 the plant. 



The same general law operates in a similar way on all woody plants, 

 but of course less rapidly, owing to the less rapid growth of trees, from 

 the lowest bush, to the oak of the forest. In all of these, the culture 

 of the soil tends to accelerate vegetation, and by consequence, to expand 

 the fibre of the toood. It necessarily renders it softer, less solid, and 

 more liable to suffer by the action of the elements. Let us shortly give 

 a few examples of the uniform effect of this law of nature. 



Every forester is aware, how greatly easier it is to cut over thorns or 

 furze, that are trained in hedges, than such as grow naturally wild, and 

 are exempt from culture. Gardeners experience the same thing, in 

 pruning or cutting over fruit-trees or shrubs ; and the difference in the 

 texture of the raspberry, in its wild and in its cultivated state, is as re- 

 markable ; for although the stem m the latter state is nearly double the 

 thickness of that in the former, it is much more easily cut. On com- 

 paring the common crab, the father of our orchards, with the cultivated 



