14 DEFICIENCY OF SHELTER. 



the author humbly hopes to show, that for this evil 

 there may be found an easy and effectual remedy. 

 The strip, then, is planted with hardwood, in- 

 terspersed with a due proportion of firs, to give 

 warmth and verdure to the winter; and for a time 

 the success is such as to answer all the anticipa- 

 tions of the owner. But thinning becomes neces- 

 sary, that the trees may not die or grow sickly and 

 unsightly, like the rubbish of old furze. Still it is 

 hard to make blanks, letting in the wind, or the 

 idle eye that steals on the loved seclusion ; the 

 knife is reluctantly employed, and the axe is never 

 laid to the root without a sigh that shakes the 



o 



leaves, and not till the formality of a trial by jury 

 has passed upon every tree that is doomed to fall. 

 Thinned they are however, as matter of necessity, 

 and then the important fact, that trees, if they have 

 room, will grow in breadth as well as height, is 

 happily discovered. Thus nature does well for a 

 season: not less abhorrent of a vacuum than the 

 planter, she fills, by lateral shoots every inch of 

 space. But, by and by, there is a deficiency for 

 which nature, in such circumstances, makes no 

 provision; as the trees rise in stature, the under 

 branches fall away, and leave only bare poles in all 

 the lower region where shelter is chiefly wanted. 



It is not supposed that the goodly evergreens 

 have been incautiously removed ; but of these, no 

 sort presents any exception to this law of incipient 

 and progressive nakedness. The Scotch fir grows 

 the barest of all; the spruce tribes do not long give 



