PART VIII. PICTURESQUE PLANTING. 495 



tend to expand the fibre of the wood, and of course render the 

 wood softer and more liable to suffer by the action of the com- 

 mon elements when the tree is cut down and applied to use- 

 That this does really take place, will, I believe, be gathered 

 from the following detached facts which have come to my 

 knowledge, and to which every practical and unprejudiced 

 reader, who has visited different parts of the kingdom, will be 

 able to add many others from his particular observation. 



1. Every hedger and forester knows, that furze, and thorns, 

 which have been cultivated in fields or hedges, are of a much 

 softer or wider grain, and are much easier cut over with the 

 hedge-bill, than such as spring up from seed in wild scenery, 

 and never undergo pruning or any species of culture. They 

 know also, that in a common to be cleared of furze or thorns, or 

 in a hedge to be cut over, there are some parts which require a 

 much slighter stroke of the hedge-bill than others ; and that 

 those parts easiest to cut are uniformly those where the plants 

 have grown quickest — Gardeners experience the same thing in 

 pruning or cutting over fruit-trees or shrubs *;. In all these 

 cases, the stems of both are supposed alike in diameter and 

 cleanness, or absence of knots ; though the same thing would 



* The difference between the texture of the cultivated and the wild raspberry 

 is striking, though the stem of the one is near double the thickness of the other. 



