

Book I. GARDENING IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 93 



different works by Kennedy, Young, the Bishop of Llandaff, Marshall, Pontey, and 

 others, has doubtless contributed to that desirable end ; and the result is, that many 

 thousand acres of waste lands have been planted with timber-trees, independently of 

 demesne-plantations, and such as have been made for shelter or effect. 



423. The nineteenth century has commenced with a much more scientific mode of 

 planting and managing trees than formerly existed. Excellent modes of pruning have 

 been pointed out and practised by Pontey, which will render future plantations much 

 more valuable than where this operation and thinning have been so generally neglected 

 as hitherto. 



424. At what time hedges were introduced into England is uncertain. They would proba- 

 bly be first exhibited in the gardens of the Roman governors, and afterwards re-appear in 

 those of the monks. From these examples, from the Roman authors on husbandry, or more 

 probably from the suggestion of travellers who had seen them abroad, they would be in- 

 troduced in rural economy. Marshal conjectures, that clearing out patches in the woods 

 for aration, and leaving strips of bushes between them, may have given the first idea of 

 a hedge, and this supposition is rendered more plausible, from the circumstance of some of 

 the oldest hedges occupying so much space, and consisting of a variety of plants. However 

 originated, they did not come into general use in laying out farms till after the Flemish 

 husbandry was introduced in Norfolk about the end of the seventeenth century. (Kent's 

 Hints, &c.) So rapidly have they increased since that period, that at the end of the 

 eighteenth century they had entirely changed the face of the country. In the time of 

 George I. almost every tract of country in England might have been said to consist 

 of four distinct parts or kinds of scenery : 1. The houses of the proprietors, and their 

 parks and gardens, and the adjoining village, containing their farmers and labourers ; 

 2. The common field or intercommonable lands in aration ; 3. The common pasture, 

 or waste untouched by the plough; and, 4, The scattered or circumscribing forest 

 containing a mass of timber or copse. But at present these fundamental features are 

 mixed and variously grouped, and the general face of the country presents one continual 

 scene of garden-like woodiness, interspersed with buildings and cultivated fields, un- 

 equalled in the world. 



The oldest enclosures in England are in Kent and Essex, and seem to have been formed of hawthorn, 

 sloe, crab, hazel, dogwood, &c. taken from the copses, and planted promiscuously ; but now almost all 

 field or fence-hedges are formed of single or double rows of hawthorn, with or without trees, planted 

 at regular distances to shoot up for timber. 



Subsect. 2. Gardening in Scotland, in respect to the planting of Timber-trees and 



Hedges. 



425. Scotland in ancient ti?)ies ivas clothed with extensive tracts of wood. (Graham, 

 in Gen. Beju of Scot. vol. ii.) By various operations carried on by the hand of Nature 

 and of man, this clothing has been in a great measure destroyed. The attempts to re- 

 store it by planting timber, however, appear to be of recent origin. Dr. Walker seems to 

 be of opinion, that the elder (Sambucus nigra) was the first barren tree planted in Scotland ; 

 and that the plane or sycamore was the next. The wood of the former was in much re- 

 quest for making arrows. " A few chestnuts and beeches," he adds, " were first planted 

 in gardens, not long before the middle of the seventeenth century, some of which have 

 remained to our times." Notwithstanding this high authority, however, there seems to be 

 good reason to conclude, that some trees which still exist were planted before the Re- 

 formation ; they appear to have been introduced by the monks, being found for the most 

 part in ecclesiastical establishments. Such are the Spanish chestnuts, the most of which 

 are still in a thriving condition in the island of Inchmahoma, in the lake of Monteith, in 

 Perthshire, where there was a priory built by David I. Some of these chestnut- trees 

 measure within a few inches of eighteen feet in circumference, at six feet from the ground. 

 They are probably three hundred years old, or upwards. There are planted oaks at 

 Buchanan, which are apparently of the same age. 



426. The father of planting in Scotland, according to Dr. Walker, was Thomas, Earl 

 of Haddington, having begun to plant Binning-wood, which is now of great extent and 

 value, in 1705. But it is stated on an authority almost approaching to certainty, that 

 the fine timber in the lawn at Callender House, in Stirlingshire, was planted by the Earl 

 of Linlithgow and Callender, who had accompanied Charles II. in his exile, upon his 

 return from the continent after the Restoration. This timber is remarkable, not only 

 for its size, but for its quantity. Planting for timber became very general in Scotland 

 between the years 1730 and 1760, by the exertions and example of Archibald, Duke of 

 Argyle, the Duke of Athol, the Earls of Bute, Loudon, Hyndford, and Panmure, Sir 

 James Nasmyth, Sir Archibald Grant, Fletcher of Saltoun, and others. It is well ascer- 

 tained that Sir Archibald Grant began to plant in 1719. 



427. A great stimulus to planting in Scotland was given by the Essays of Dr. Anderson, 

 published in 1784, in which the value of the larch-tree and the progress it had made 

 at Dunkeld, since planted there in 1741. were pointed out. The examples and 



