ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 55 
and upwards, after that rate, either by free deed, 
copie hold, or fee farme, might plant one acre of 
wood, or sowe the same with oke mast, hasell, 
beech, and sufficient provision be made that it 
may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that 
I should then live too long, and so long that I 
should either be wearie of the world, or the 
world of me; and yet they are not such things 
but they may easilie be brought to passe.’ 
Even earlier than this, however, trees and 
woods had been cultivated prior to the reign of 
Edward IV., while in 1523 John Fitzherbert 
wrote his Book of Husbandry, the first work 
in the English language which deals with the 
cultivation of trees. In this he treats shortly 
of the removal and planting of trees, the fell- 
ing of timber and of wood for household use or 
sale, the ‘shredding’ or pollarding of trees, and 
coppicing in enclosures, or how ‘0 kepe springe 
wode. Immediately after the chapter on trees 
comes a quaintly-naive passage in which ‘short 
informacyon for a yonge gentylman that entendeth 
to thryve’ is thus given: ‘I advyse hym to get a 
copy of this present booke and to rede it frome 
the begynnynge to the endynge, wherby he may 
