OF OAK PLANTATIONS. 171 



known that young hard-wood plants are apt to 

 suffer a severe check when newly lifted from 

 a sheltered nursery, owing to the cold, cutting 

 winds which prevail in such quarters. Indeed, 

 in all cases, young hard-wood trees which may 

 have been reared in some of the public nurse- 

 ries near large towns, when they are removed to 

 and planted in a high moorland county, seldom 

 do much good for three or four years after their 

 removal. The whole part of the plant situated 

 above the grass or foggage of the ground, becomes 

 stunted, and gradually dies down to within two 

 or three inches of the surface, which part remains 

 fresh, because sheltered by the foggage from the 

 winds ; and, indeed, if the plants are left to them- 

 selves in such a situation, they, about the third 

 year after being planted, and after the roots have 

 properly established themselves, send up a number 

 of young shoots from the live part about the 

 surface of the ground, which young shoots ulti- 

 mately become trees of inferior magnitude ; but 

 if those young shoots be thinned out to one indi- 

 vidual, a tree of the usual magnitude will be the 

 result. JSTow, this system of cutting over is only 

 assisting nature ; and if, instead of allowing the 

 young trees to lie dormant for three years, as is 

 the case when left to nature, the forester cuts each 

 tree over by the surface one year after they are 

 planted, he places himself, by his art, two years 



