446 



PART II. 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. A Series of Facts, Hints, Observations, and Experiments 

 on the different Modes of Raising, Pruning, and Training Young 

 Trees in Plantations. By W. Billington, Superintendant of the 

 Planting of the Royal Forest of Dean, &c. 



This book is composed by a well-meaning good-natured 

 sort of a man, evidently little accustomed to wield the pen. 

 His " series of facts,'' however valuable some of them may 

 be, are rather loosely arranged, and mixed up with much 

 digressive and extraneous remark. The history of the rearing 

 of the fences at Dean Forest exhibits little that is creditable 

 to the projectors. The large banks of earth often gave way; 

 and, " sometimes, only the outside turf slipped down, and did 

 not, in the least, disturb the live hedge of whins." " The 

 sheep and cattle, by grazing on the outsides of the banks, on 

 soils of a loamy nature inclining to clay or marl, pulled up the 

 grass that grew between the layers of turf, by the roots, which 

 caused them to crumble down like clay, marl, or lime." 

 (p. 6, 7.) This result might, we conceive, have been a priori 

 expected ; and, in place of the managers confining them- 

 selves to one form of fence in all soils, and that form, too, the 

 least of all adapted for general practice, it would have been 

 easy to vary the form of fence to suit the nature of the soil. 

 On soils where the turf was full of small roots, the form of 

 fence specified by the contract, though of itself sufficiently 

 clumsy, and perfectly inadequate, without a top-rail, to keep 

 out sheep while the whins were young, yet, when they were 

 up, might, with their assistance, form a tolerable fence. The 

 bank contracted for was " to be made 4 ft. 6 in. wide at bot- 

 tom, 5 ft. high, and 2 ft. wide at top ; and care was taken to 

 build them entirely of turf, cut thin, from 3 to 4 or 5 in. thick, 

 according to the nature of the soil ; and a ditch 1 8 in. deep on 

 the outside, a row of furze or whins to be sown on the top, 

 and another at the foot of the banks outside." To this form, 

 for universal practice, we have several objections : and, in the 

 first place, it robs too great a breadth of the adjacent ground 

 of its surface soil. Suppose the medium thickness of the turf 

 to be 4 in., every linear foot of such fence will require \Q\ cubic 



