350 PLANTATIONS OF TIMBER TREES. 



the quantity of food consumed by a certain number* of 

 ' chickens in a given time ; as on this must depend the price at 

 which they could be sold, and the profit that might be made 

 of them. This would have been attended with another ad- 

 vantage, it would have been a guide with respect to the 

 quantity of the diiferent kinds of food, with which the 

 chickens ought to be supplied in the several stages of their 

 growth, to those who have not been in the habit of rearing 

 poultry ; and this must necessarily be the case with many 

 persons in the vicinity of London in particular, to whom 

 the adoption of Mrs. D'Oyley's plan might be very desirable. 

 Mrs. D'Oyley does not say Avhether the turkeys she men- 

 tions were reared in tlie same way. 



VIII. 



Plants above 

 100 acres a 

 yfar. 



Trees should 

 be very sparing- 

 ly pruned. 



Oaks 



Larch wood 



Comimmicaiio7i from the Right Hon. the Earl of Fife, 

 relative to his Plantations *. 

 SIR, 



1 request you will lay this letter before the Society for the 

 Encouragement of Arts, &^c. as I feel it my duty to con* 

 vey any information to them, respecting my plantations, 

 from the grateful sense of the honour they have done me* 

 I have continued every year, since I last wrote to the 

 Society, to plant above one hundred acres : my plantations 

 now, in the counties of Banif, Aberdeen, and Murray, 

 amount to about thirteen thousand acres. I have always re- 

 commended to planters to be very sparing in pruning trees. 

 I have the pleasure to observe, that on the highest grounds 

 In DufF-House Park, even Avhere exposed to the sea, by 

 cutting down firs and other trees, where they interfere with 

 each other, the oaks and other close-grained timber 

 trees rise vigorous and healthy, and will be very valuable, 

 the oaks in particular. The silver fir and larch also grow 

 to a great size. I was under the necessity of cutting down 

 two silver firs and larches, where they prevented the 

 growth of other trees; I directed them to be sawed up — The 

 boards of the larch have been made into tables, and are 



* Trans, of the Society of Arts for 1807, p. 1, 



Tery 



