Arboretum Britannicum. 373 



others who have travelled more widely, and had their eyes longer open, to 

 supply what in his statement is deficient, and rectify what is erroneous. 

 But in the first place press into the service your neighbour, Mr. Bicheno, 

 who has been for years meditating to write on this very subject ; and, if he 

 will write one tenth part as well on this topic as he has written on Ireland, 

 his essay will be a most valuable one. And now let him slumber no longer. 

 All vegetables shall combine to arouse him. May all the thorns and 

 prickles and spines and points of Cactus, and Carduus, and Cnicus, and 

 Cratas'gus, and Cow-itch, and whatever else is most pungent, fix themselves 

 in him, and make him wince, and toss, and twist, till no three angles in 

 his huge homologous sides continue equal to two right angles ; unless he 

 do, " omitting," as the king says, " all other business, before the feast of 

 St. Martin the Bishop, in winter now next," shake the anthers of his peri- 

 cranium over divers sheets of white paper (in the manner recommended 

 by Mr. James Craig for vines, in Vol. VI. p. 687., or in any other effective 

 manner), until he have impregnated the great globular black pistils of your 

 printer's devils with a full crop of information upon the subject. He would- 

 be a host, who would leave little for any other more puny ally to effect. 

 But, as I think you evince sound judgment in asking for as many portraits 

 of each tree as correspondents will send you, that from many concurrent 

 testunonies to its lineaments you may more spu'itedly and truly hit off its 

 real graphic characters, so I think you may not act unwisely if you seek 

 to multiply testimonies to the geological elections of each tree and shrub, 

 from comparing which testimonies, and weighing their discrepancies, you 

 may more accurately attain the true geological character of each plant. 

 Should you express yourself to be of this opinion [We are and shall be 

 much obliged by our correspondent's cooperation.], I may venture myself 

 to trouble you with some imperfect observations on the subject ; not 

 desiring to pass them as oracular, but inviting every degree of doubt and 

 discussion, as knowmg how frequentlj' I take up an impression too hastily. 

 But, above all men living, I counsel you to suck the brains of the amiable 

 kind-hearted William Smith, who never can refrain from telling to a 

 fellow-creature every thing which he knows himself and which the other 

 wishes to know; nor, if even he had wished to refrain, could he ever 

 have acquired selfishness enough to be able to do it. Though he has 

 again and again seen all .his discoveries appropriated by others who had 

 not a tenth part of his observation, yet never will his childlike simplicity, 

 and eager love of science and of all who love science, suffer him to bury 

 a remark in his own bosom longer than he finds a human creature to 

 impart it to. Alas ! that such talent and such benevolence should in hac 

 fiece Romuli be its own reward ; and that blockheads should batten on the 

 science which he first taught the way to investigate ! 



It is not easily to be conceived how important this knowledge is to the 

 planter. Nothing is more common than to observe seats, and parks, and 

 villas, on which immense sums have been expended in architecture, and 

 perhaps no less money in planting, but which nevertheless bear such 

 a stunted, starved, miserable vesture of trees and shrubs, that they look 

 mean, beggarly, comfortless, and altogether unattractive. I v/ill venture 

 to say that, in almost all cases, this failure is enhanced, and is very frequently 

 occasioned, by the omission to select plants congenial to the stratum ; and 

 that there is no soil in this island, however unpromising, unless perhaps 

 some of the lightest and most spongy peat moss, or absolutely solid and 

 naked rock (and perhaps not even those), which may not be covered with 

 a healthy and vigorous growth of some species of wood, either trees or 

 shrubs, by means of a judicious selection, adapted to the strata: so that 

 those who are doomed by their possessions to inhabit an ungenial soil 

 may solace the rigours of their abode by calling together theii- indigenous 

 friends around them ; always understanding that, in this case, it is the elec». 



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