AMONG THE OAKS 93 
forty foot where they stand closest; especially of 
the spreading kind.’ 
This freedom and liberty of expansion side- 
wards in all directions has long remained one 
of the guiding principles in British Arbori- 
culture, the oaks being grown as individual 
trees, and not regarded as merely important 
units or valuable items in the crops of timber. 
And it is only within the last few years that 
general opinion in this country has begun to 
veer round so far as to admit that better 
monetary results are certainly obtainable from 
woodlands if these be grown much more thickly 
than hitherto, or ‘in normal density of canopy 
for the given kind of tree,’ as was the phrase 
of the scientific forester. 
Even before Evelyn’s time the disadvantages 
of allowing branches to develop to an excessive 
extent had been loudly decried by William 
Lawson in his New Orchard and Garden (1618); 
but he advocated pruning, and not any closer 
position of the oak trees, for the improvement 
of the bole. 
It is only by growing oak, and all other 
trees, more closely together than has hitherto 
