Plantations. 5 17 



native timber ; there is equally little danger of a deficiency 

 of surface for the culture of grass or corn; and therefore, if 

 any landed proprietor chooses to ornament the country with- 

 out benefiting himself, the country, so far from objecting, 

 ought to be very much obliged to him. We can assert, with- 

 out fear of contradiction, that there is not one proprietor in, 

 a hundred, in the west of Scotland, that prunes, thins, and 

 otherwise manages his plantations as he ought to do, in 

 order to make the most of them in point of profit during 

 the first twenty years of their growth, and of both profit 

 and beauty afterwards.* This fact, when considered in the 

 abstract, seems almost incredible; nevertheless, it cannot 

 be denied, though in many cases it would seem difficult 1 to 

 assign a reason. An opinion that plantations cannot afford 

 profit for many years after planting; ignorance of what is 

 required; indifference on the subject; and a general dislike 

 to cutting down trees, whether young or old, are reasons 

 which very generally prevail. The last is carried to an extent 

 which may be considered a diseased feeling; and is, in our 

 opinion, most ridiculous. In Ayrshire, we found very exterv- 

 sive plantations, of from five to thirty years' growth, on one 

 nobleman's estate, from which not a tree has been thinned 

 since they were planted at the rate of five thousand plants to 

 the acre. The mass has become impervious to either man 

 or cattle; and, as timber or fuel, it would not, if now cut 

 down, as the very intelligent gardener on the estate informed 

 us, pay the cost of the trees, nearly four times the price, thirty 

 years ago, that they are now, before they were removed from 

 the nursery. On another nobleman's estate, in the same 

 country, we found oaks in more than double the above num- 

 ber per acre, which, we were informed, it was never intended 

 to thin, but to leave to grow up together, and choke and kill 

 one another, in imitation of nature. We have no objection 

 to this plan, provided it be not recommended as good, with 

 a view to profit. A plantation composed of trees all planted 

 or sown at the same time, can never be said to be a just imi- 

 tation of a state of nature. In natural woods we find trees of 

 all ages ; and hence, the ease with which the stronger over- 

 come the weaker, and acquire a timber size ; but where all 

 are sown or planted at once, and at equal distances, all are 



* We say profit and beauty afterwards; because, after trees have attained 

 a timber height, much of their beauty, when collected in masses, depends 

 on each tree having room sufficient to show the character of its head. 

 Hence a wood, consisting of trees singly and in small groups, with under- 

 wood beneath, is almost always more beautiful than a grove consisting of 

 trees only; because, in the latter case, the trees generally, even in the best* 

 managed groves^ stand too thick. n j f 



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