On clearing Land. 325 



powers of labour to their utmost degree. It opens 

 a sufficiency of land for the introduction of improve- 

 ment, by rest, successive crops and meadows, before 

 a part is exhausted ; and it saves the wood and timber 

 devoted to destruction, by a necessity for cutting down 

 new ; to supply the place of exhausted land, during a 

 slow course of clearing. 



If a tract of 400 acres, would, in its most perfect 

 state, consist of 300 in fine heart and cultivation, and 

 of 100 in wood and timber ; the more rapidly it can be 

 brought to that state, the better. If 30 years are em- 

 ployed in clearing the 300 acres, it will never arrive at 

 that state. Much of the land will be impoverished by 

 severe cropping for want of room, and at the end of 

 thirty years, the hundred acres reserved for timber 

 and wood, must be invaded, to compensate for the land 

 destroyed. Nor can the profit of labour be consider- 

 able during the whole period, because it will be partly 

 lost for want of room, partly by the cultivation of w^eak 

 land, and partly by the annual expence of clearing ten . 

 acres. Whereas an instant reduction of the 300 acres 

 to a state fit for cultivation, would place within the 

 reach of the proprietor the most perfect system of 

 culture, in respect to the speediness and amount of 

 income, the effectiveness of labour, the improvement 

 of land, and the preservation of wood and timber. 



Therefore the most powerful, is probably the best 

 agent to employ in clearing land. No agent operates so 

 powerfully on wood, as fire. Julius Caesar has, I think, 

 commemorated its usefulness towards the object under 

 consideration, in his account of the ancient inhabitants 

 of Britain. 



