390 



SECTION VII. 



Note I. Page 194. 



I F«KL particular satisfaction in paying this just tribute to the memory 

 of a superior and ingenious artist. His professional character has been 

 slightly, but justly sketched in the passage, to which this note refers ; 

 and all, who remember him, will unite with me in doing justice to his 

 private worth, his pleasing manners, and his extensive information on 

 all subjects connected with rural affairs. Mr. White was an excellent 

 agriculturist, an ingenious mechanic, and a planter of great skill. Like 

 his master. Brown, he was in the habit of undertaking the execution of 

 his own designs, and also, of plantations of considerable extent, in both 

 England and Scotland, imtil his business as a landscape gardener, in 

 the latter country, became too extensive to admit of such undertakings. 

 In this way he had planted, before the year 1780, for Lord Douglas, at 

 Douglas Castle, about fifteen hundred acres of ground, which are now 

 covered with fine wood, and of which the thinnings have long been a 

 source of considerable revenue to the noble owner. 



About the year 1770, Mr. White made the purchase of an estate in 

 the higher parts of the county of Durham, on which he planted so ex- 

 tensively and successfully, that it may be worth while, for the encourage- 

 ment of the young planter, to give some idea of the returns which it made 

 to him. But these are so wonderful and portentous, that to the ordina- 

 ry reader, they may rather seem referable to the feats of some arbo- 

 ricultural Miinckhausen, than to the sober results of judgment and 

 industry. 



The territory of Woodlands (for so it was named by the new owner) 

 extended to between seven and eight hundred acres, and cost Mr. White 

 about 750 Z. It was situated in a high, and at that time a barren tract 

 of country, about eighteen miles from the city of Durham, and wholly 

 destitute of wood. But, as it was surrounded with coal-mines, he had 

 the sagacity to foresee, that there was scarcely any return, that might no 

 be expected from fir and larch, and other quick growers judiciously 

 planted and on a suitable soil. The first thing he did, therefore, was to 



