SESSILE- FRUITED OAK. 269 



respective planter, is at once secured, with the additional 

 advantage of gaining from three to five years in advance 

 of native plants, for, even should it be thought advan- 

 tageous, as many do, to cut close over by the surface 

 all such trees as at the end of the first or second season 

 after insertion have made little or no progress, or which 

 look stunted and unseemly in growth, still the shoot that 

 they rarely fail to make after this operation, would, in 

 almost every case, exceed the growth of a native plant 

 of three or four years old, and the advantage would 

 remain with the planted tree. 



The benefit of trenching * and manuring the ground 

 previously to planting has been much insisted on and 

 strongly recommended in various treatises on arboricul- 

 ture and planting ; we think, however, that those who 

 speak so highly in its favour and recommend its general 

 adoption have been premature in their conclusions, and 

 we fully agree in the opinion expressed by Mr. Matthew 

 in his able treatise on naval timber, that, had they waited 

 the result of twenty-eight or thirty years' 1 growth, their 

 conclusions as to its ultimate advantage would have been 

 very different from those drawn from the state of plants, 

 as exhibited in trenched ground, of eight or ten years' 

 growth. Such also is the inference we draw from our 

 own experience, and, as we have tested the system upon 

 a tolerably extensive scale, and also watched its progress 

 and effect in other instances, we venture to speak with 

 some degree of confidence upon the subject. 



About thirty years ago, an extent of about sixty acres 

 around the mansion at Twizell was planted in one season, 

 and, as a new approach was made to run through it, a 

 strip of this ground, about thirty yards in width on each 



* See Wither's Pamphlet. 



