'with Hints for their Removal. 51 



Well, after the specification of a disease, there are the ge- 

 neral and particular remedies, internal remedies, and external 

 applications, preventives, preservatives, abaters, provokers, 

 with numerous and different herbs, and methods to effect the 

 object ; and, as Shakspeare says, 



" like a man to double business bound, 



I stand in pause which I shall first begin. 

 And both neglect." 



Consequently, among so many, not knowing which to prefer, 

 I neglect all, or adopt any remedy that another recommends. 

 So, I am afraid, the case is too often with respect to pruning 

 and thinning of plantations, when the owner has not a com- 

 petent knowledge of it himself; and this is very rarely the 

 case. 



Mr. Howden says, " Some people are of opinion that the 

 branches, twigs, and leaves assist the growth of timber ; and 

 a certain author, Mr. Withers, compares the leaves of trees 

 to its mouths," and " advises such authors to shut their 

 mouths till they can open them to better purpose." Mr. 

 Howden says he should rather have called the leaves 

 " nostrils, or mere excrements," because the trees discharge 

 them annually. It would thus appear that trees have a won- 

 derful power of retaining their excrements for six or eight 

 months. I happen to be one of those persons who think that 

 the branches, twigs, and leaves do assist the growth of timber ; 

 also, that the leaves of trees take in nourishment for the sup- 

 port and increase of the wood, or timber, if you like; which 

 persons Mr. Howden affects to hold up to ridicule, and 

 desires to shut their mouths, but not their eyes or ears, I 

 presume, to hear or see what he says upon the subject. 



Some of our physiologists say that leaves have a power of 

 absorbing and imbibing nutriment from the gases in the atmo- 

 sphere ; which a common person, like myself, who pretends to 

 none of that great learning, would term, to take in or to draw 

 in nourishment, when discoursing with persons of his own 

 size or make ; but not to mean, to eat, chew, or swallow it. 

 If Mr. Howden had read carefully what Mr. Lindley (the 

 professor of botany) has advanced on these two subjects in 

 his late lectures, extracts of which have appeared in the three 

 last Numbers of your Magazine [Vol. VIII. p. 380., 507., 

 615.], letting alone other authors, he would not have been so 

 ready, perhaps, to have ridiculed, and desired him, with others, 

 to shut his mouth, if he could open it to no better purpose ; 

 nor, had he read Mr. Main's remarks on the use of branches 

 and twigs in forming timber, whose ideas and rules for 



E 3 



