APPENDIX. 



717 



" The last fashion of drive which Mr. Brown never made is an open drive, 

 so wide that it never goes near the trees, and which admits such a current, 

 of air, that the front trees are generally the worst in the plantation ; add 

 to this, that two narrow slips of planting will neither grow so well, nor be 

 such effectual harbours for game, as deeper masses, especially when the 

 game are liable to be disturbed by a drive between them. The belt may 

 be useful as a screen ; but, unless very deep, it should never be used as a 

 drive, at least till after the trees have acquired their growth, when a drive 

 may be cut through the wood to advantage.'" The first passage in italics, is 

 directly contrary to what takes place in experience ; for in a wide drive, as 

 well as on the outer margin of a wood or grove, the trees are uniformly the 

 largest and most beautifully shaped. Every woodman knows, and any 

 one may observe, that the second practice would inevitably produce wind: 

 shakes, as may be seen in all parts of the island, from the openings lately 

 made in the platoons in Kensington Gardens, to the public roads cut 

 through the Scotch fir woods in Perthshire. 



" It is not only the line of the modern belt and drive that is objection- 

 able, but also the manner in which the plantations are made, by the in- 

 discriminate mixture of every kind of tree.. In this system of planting, 

 all variety is destroyed by the excess of variety, whether it is adopted in 

 belts or clumps, as they have been technically called (This idea is taken 

 from Mr. Price's Essays ; but Mr. Repton, not knowing how to reduce it 

 to practice, would thus proceed 1 he says,) " for example, if ten clumps be 

 composed of ten different sorts of trees in each, they become so many 

 things exactly similar ; but if each clump consist of the same sort of 

 trees" (that is, if one clump were of larches, another of Scotch firs, a third 

 of beeches, a fourth of oaks, a fifth of chesnuts, a sixth of thorns, and so on) 

 they become ten different things, of which one may hereafter furnish a 

 group 'of oaks, another of elms, another of chesnuts or of thorns, &c." 

 Clumps of mixed kinds are bad ; but this mode would produce a dis- 

 tinctness and incongruity which would be incomparably worse. By such 

 a practice, unity, connection, and variety, would be set at defiance. 



