34 DEFEXCE OF POLLARDS. 



but this method is wholly inadmissible for the 

 adorning of treeless hedges, or relieving the sterile 

 and wretched appearance of dry stone dykes an 

 object extending to nine tenths of the arable fields 

 throughout all the breadth and length of the land. 



Let younger trees be planted, in the form of pol- 

 lards, and they will do in every case clothing the 

 country, and at no considerable cost. It is objected 

 to the pollard, that it has a mean and deformed 

 appearance; but what is the patience of a bare 

 pole for one summer, compared with enduring the 

 nakedness of a country age after age? And that 

 the defect is only temporary, I could refer to a 

 thousand instances in which the most critical eye 

 could not discover that the tree, no longer a pollard, 

 had once suffered the disgrace of decapitation. 

 Where the young shoots are thinned out, the second 

 or third year after transplanting, and any decayed 

 wood smoothed off, so as to allow the bark to close 

 in with the new growth, no more defect will be 

 visible than in any tree of the same advancement 

 growing where it was sown. The ash and elm do 

 best, and the oak will not fail in good soil; but the 

 beech and the plane had better not be lopped, and in 

 that case the roots must be more carefully extracted. 



But why make pollards at all, it may be asked, 

 since their appearance is at least for a time de- 

 formed? The answer is, that, having little ballast, 

 they meet the wind with less sail; but a far stronger 

 reason is, that the future growth of the pollard is 

 better than that of a tree, of whatever size, trans- 



