LOMBARD"! POPLAR. 



207 



adapted for the purpose above-mentioned. In France, 

 fences are frequently formed of this tree ; plants, when 

 about six feet high, being run in lines six inches apart, 

 they are then connected by a horizontal rod about three 

 feet above the ground, and thus treated, produce a fence 

 the first season. In five or six years, the trees composing 

 the fence are either all cut down for various minor pur- 

 poses, or else they are thinned out, and a certain number 

 left to attain a timber-like size, which they do in eighteen 

 or twenty years ; but this mode, Loudon observes, is only 

 followed when the fields enclosed are of such a size as 

 not to be injured by the shade of the trees. 



As a tree requiring a free circulation of air and room, 

 it does not thrive in close mixed plantations, or even 

 in masses by itself, on which account it is unfit to be 

 planted even as an undergrowth to furnish poles or inferior 

 sized wood for minor purposes. In Britain, therefore, it 

 is cultivated almost exclusively as an ornamental tree, for 

 which its towering height and spire-like form eminently 

 qualify it, particularly when associated with buildings, and 

 so used either as a counterpoise or supporting mass to 

 these, or to break the uniformity of long horizontal lines. 

 Its use, however, in landscape composition, requires skill 

 and judgment, and a thorough knowledge of the effect 

 to be produced, for placed inadvertently, or without at- 

 tention to surrounding objects, it more frequently mars 

 than improves the scene, a fact that must frequently 

 have been observed where this tree has been largely and 

 unskilfully introduced.* 



From its harmonising so well with buildings, the small 



* In the " Arboretum Britannicum " our readers will find some appropriate 

 remarks on the effects produced in landscape by this tree, illustrated by excellent 

 woodcuts. 



