292 Retrospective Criticism. 



Cheap Planting. — I join heartily with Mr. Lawrence in his reprobation of 

 what is misnamed cheap planting, as, for instance, planting by contract. The 

 following voluntary confession may, perhaps, throw some light upon this subject. 

 A labourer who has worked on the same premises for myself, and my prede- 

 cessors, for more than thirty years, and who was, when a very young man, em- 

 ployed in setting the trees of an extensive plantation, in a bleak, exposed, hilly 

 district, by contract, has several times remarked to me, when I have been 

 planting a tree, and have required his assistance in the work, that I was far 

 more particular, in spreading out the roots, filling in the soil, &c, than he and 



his fellows used to be when they made the plantations on . " We were 



not very nice about it, Sir," he would say : " we just dug a hole, and stuck 

 the trees in any how ; and, so that they would but stand upright, we did not 

 much care whether they lived or died." — W. T. Bree. 



The gross Neglect and erroneous Practice (ivith few Exceptions) in the Thin- 

 ning and Pruning of young Plantations. — To incur the great expense of previous 

 preparation of the soil, enclosing and planting, and afterwards to leave 

 to chance or ignorance the rearing of the timber, is a species of folly that 

 cannot be too severely animadverted on. From the wheelwright's shop or 

 carpenter's yard, to the great naval depots of timber, knots and rottenness are 

 in every place to be seen, the fruits generally of the woodman's or forester's 

 mismanagement. — Geo. Burton, late Gardener and Forester to Sir JSdiv. Kerri- 

 son, Bart., at Oaklet/ Park, near Eye, Suffolk. April 21. 1834. An excellent 

 paper on the above subject, by this correspondent, will appear in an early 

 Number. — Cond. 



The Horsechestnut Tree is of an eligible habit for giving to woods, through 

 which walks for pleasure are led, and in which boughiness and branchi- 

 ness near the earth are desired, this boughiness and branchiness. It is, in 

 p. 234., remarked, that the woods in Kensington Gardens are " thin with ex- 

 cessive thickness," and that they, notwithstanding they " have undergone a 

 second weeding in the course of last winter, will bear several more thinnings 

 in succeeding years, till the trees have sufficient room to admit of their putting 

 out lateral branches, and thus prevent the masses being seen through." This 

 remark has reminded me that, shortly previous to the date of it, Mr. Main of 

 Chelsea had pointed out to me, in Kensington Gardens, the happy effects of 

 here and there a horsechestnut tree (and he regretted that they were not more 

 numerous in these and in all woods planted for pleasure), whose pendulous, 

 leafy, verdant branches, reaching far downwards to the earth, were disposed 

 with happy interception to the view beyond, and as a pleasing object for the 

 eye to dwell on, between " the upright," naked " shafts of the tall elmsj" as 

 the poet Cowper has said in speaking of the elm, and as those of the elms in 

 Kensington Gardens literally are. How lovely a tree (and so easily propa- 

 gated and cheaply acquirable) is the horsechestnut! I have never seen 

 justice done, in description, to its merits, except in the Magazine of Natural 

 History, IV. 238., where Mr. Dovaston has, in a " description of a beautiful 

 tree," fairly set down all its charms. I was once, some ten years ago, told of 

 some nobleman who had a passionate admiration of the horsechestnut tree, 

 and had caused the branches of some fine ones in his grounds to reach quite to 

 the earth, by first fixing them downward with chains, to promote their natu- 

 rally somewhat prone direction. I mentioned this to Mr. Main, who remarked, 

 that, to prevent cattle biting off the branches of the horsechestnut to the height 

 that they can reach (named the browsing line), as they will the branches of all 

 trees, it is well to chain or otherwise fasten the ends of the branches into the 

 soil, and lay and keep them there until they have there rooted, and so esta- 

 blished themselves firmly enough to resist the cattle's attempts to browse them 

 so as to wholly either consume or dislodge them. The arches, too, thus 

 formed, would provide shady, though probably fly-frequented, bowers for cattle. 

 I think that Mr. Main, besides suggesting this, said that he had practised 

 it.— J. D. 



Mr. Ballard? 's Treatise on showing the Impossibility of increasing the Quantity, 

 or improving the Quality, of Timber by pruning. (IX. 687.; X. 74.) — If trees 



