576 ON USEFUL AND BOOK I. 



elms, and pollard oaks which prevail in many places in the 

 south; the former, by improper pruning, are worth nothing jl 

 and the latter, by being cut over at the height of eight or ten 

 feet, form ugly clump-headed bushes, which do great in- 

 jury to the farmer, and yield nothing to the landlord. In de- 

 fence of these practices, it may be said, that fuel alone is the 

 intended produce; but certainly it would be mueh the best 

 way to allot a space by itself for raising fuel, and devote the 

 hedgerows to the more important purpose of producing tim- 

 ber. The fuel plantation might be rented by the farmer, and 

 the hedgerows would belong exclusively to the proprietor. — ■ 

 Keeping each species of plantation strictly characteristic of 

 its kind, is as beneficial in planting, as the division of labour is 

 in political economy. There are a number of places in Scot- 

 land, and the northern counties of England, where hedgerow 

 timber might be planted, to the advantage of both landlord 

 and tenant, and the great ornament of the country. Suppose 

 an estate of two thousand acres, divided into fields of ten acres 

 each, and the hedgerows planted with trees at fifteen feet apart 

 this would be above the rate of eight trees upon each acre, or 

 sixteen thousand trees in the hedges only. At the end of thirty 

 years, if well managed, they would be worth from twenty to 

 forty shillings each, say only thirty shillings each; this is sixteen 

 thousand pounds. A very considerable sum for a proprietor of 

 only two thousand acres to receive every thirty years, above the* 

 annual rent of his estate,, 



