Notes on planting Timber Trees in Scotland. 463 



their listening too much to their tenants, who usually grudge 

 every morsel of land taken off the farm for this purpose. It is 

 the custom here, in agricultural leases, to reserve to the landlord 

 power to take from the farm what land he may wish for planting, 

 upon his allowing to the tenant a deduction from his rent 

 for it, as the same shall be fixed by arbitration. No sooner 

 does the landlord declare his intention of planting, say a clump, 

 than the tenant declares it to be " the very soul of the farm," 

 while to other people it looks like a very ordinary bit of land 

 or if a belt along the foot of the hill, around the ring fence of the 

 farm, is proposed, the answer is, " It's an unco gude bit for the 

 sheep:" and, if the landlord boldly goes on to take the bit of 

 land, the arbiters lay on the tawse smartly in fixing the deduction 

 of rent in consequence, so that the landlord gets disgusted, and 

 the planting is abandoned. Instead of this course, let the 

 landlord, before the end of a lease, consider the matter well, and 

 stake off his land for his plantation, and he will find that what is 

 taken off* makes a wonderfully small diminution, if any, in the 

 sum offered for the farm. So much for the time when a plant- 

 ation ought to be made. 



Our severest blasts of wind here are from the south-west and 

 west, as may be seen from our trees bending to the east. Our 

 belts therefore, as far as practicable, run from north to south, and 

 from north-west to south-east, though this is of course varied by 

 situation and convenience. They ought never to be less than 

 sixty yards wide; and, if twenty or forty more yards can be added 

 to their width, the shelter will not only be greater, and the wood 

 better, but they will look much handsomer; and, if they are 

 wide enough to allow a roadway along the centre of the belt, 

 it will be found a great advantage, both in giving access to the 

 wood for carting, when it is of a size fit for useful purposes, and 

 also when it is young, in affording facilities of inspecting the 

 wood with a view to thinning, which, alas ! is so much neglected. 

 Most proprietors know the advantage of a march fence; they 

 would, in many cases, find it greatly to their benefit and not much 

 more expensive to have a march stripe, for which each coter- 

 minous proprietor should give forty or fifty yards, having a road 

 in the centre along the actual line of march, or it might be more 

 convenient if the stripe were for so much of its length on one 

 man's land and so much on the other. By this latter mode, 

 each would be able to thin his own wood to his liking; and this 

 is of greater consequence in a stripe than in almost any other 

 form of plantation, and in stripes is almost always neglected. 

 There is a passage in your Suburban Gardener^ p. 470., as to 

 thinning, which ought to be hung up over the mantel-pieces of 

 our Scottish lairds. I do not think I could name ten plantations 

 in the South of Scotland where the trees are sufficiently thinned ; 



