FOEESTAL LITEEATURE. 259 



place where it is desired that the tree should grow, instead 

 of transplanting trees from the forest to insert in the 

 place. " I do affirm upon experience," says he, " that an 

 acorn sown by the hand, in nurseries, or ground in which 

 it is free from encumbrances encountered in the forest, 

 shall, in two or three years, outstrip a plant of twice that 

 age which has been self-sown in the woods, or removed, 

 unless it fprtune by some favourable accident to have 

 been scattered into more natural, penetrable, and better 

 qualified place. But this disproportion is infinitely more 

 remarkable in the pine and the walnut tree, where the 

 nut set in the ground does easily overtake a tree of ten 

 years' growth, -which was planted at the same instant." 



He alleges that transplanting greatly improves fruit- 

 trees, but that " unless they are taken up the first year, it 

 is a considerable impediment to the growth of forest trees." 



I am giving the views published by Evelyn irrespective 

 of what my own views on points referred to may be ; and 

 doing so, I abstain from modifying his statements or 

 attempting to make them more lucid by substituting 

 some modern phrase. 



After a discussion of earth, soil, seeds, air, and water, 

 in their connection with arboriculture, and of the ex- 

 pediency, or rather inexpediency, of transplanting trees 

 from the forest, he gives a great deal of information in 

 regard to the different trees which then were, and still are, 

 generally planted in England ; and he treats at large of 

 diseases to which some or all of them are liable — in doing 

 which he advances some things not altogether consistent 

 with modem ideas of the physiology of plants. He then 

 discusses the subject of coppice- woods, of the pruning and 

 the felling of trees, the seasoning of timber, and the manu- 

 facture of charcoal. And he gives, in a series of aphorisms, 

 a summary of the counsels and instructions enumerated. 



The work is followed up with encouragements to plant 

 Crown lands with trees, for the doing of which he submits 

 appropriate plans ; and concludes with a prose poem on 

 the sacredness of groves in the olden times. 



