vi 



INTRODUCTION. 



The work is, as you will see by the title page, the produc- 

 tion of 3Ir, Forsyth, the King's gardener at Kensington and 

 St. James's. He, some years ago, made public his method of 

 curing diseased and decayed fruit and forest-trees, for which 

 disclosure, after a very minute examination, made by men of 

 great skill, his Majesty, at the recommendation of both Houses 

 of Parliament, granted him a reward of four thousand pounds. 

 A full account of this examination, together with its result, 

 you will find in the appendix to the present work. 



During the last summer (1801), I went with a party of 

 friends, to be an eye witness of the effects (of which I had 

 heard such wonders related) of this gentleman's mode of cul- 

 tivating and curing trees ; and, though my mind had received 

 a strong prepossession in its favour, what I saw very far sur- 

 passed my expectation. Mr. Forsyth, whose book was not 

 then published, did us the favour to shew us the manuscript of 

 it, and also the drawings for the plates, which are now to be 

 found at the end of the v/ork. After having r^ad those parts 

 of the manuscript, which more immediately refeiTed to the 

 drawings, we went into the gardens, and there saw every tree 

 which the drawings were intended to represent, and of which 

 we found them to be a most exact representation. 



We examined these trees from the ground to the topmost 

 branches ; we counted the joints in the wood, ascertained the 

 time and extent of its growth, and, in short, verified every 

 fact that the book related. To raise fine flourishing wood 

 from an old cankered, gummy, decayed stem ; to raise as much 

 wood on that stem, in three years, as could have been raised 

 on the finest young tree, in twelve years ; to take the rotten 

 wood from the trunk, to replace it with sound wood, actually 

 to fill up the hollows, and, of a mere shell, to make a full, 

 round, and solid trunk : all this seems incredible ; but of all 

 this we saw indubitable proof. The superiority of Mr. For- 



