OF FOREST-TREES. 



99 



for the distui'bance of a year's crop at most in a little corn ! whilst aban- CHAP. VI. 

 doning his young woods all this time, and perhaps many years, to the 

 venomous bitings and treading of cattle, and other like injuries, for want 

 of due care, the detriment is many times irreparable ; young trees once 

 cropped, hardly ever recovering. It is the bane of all our most hopeful 

 timber. 



But shall I provoke you by an instance ? A kinsman of mine has 

 a wood of more than sixty years' standing ; it was, before he purchased 

 it, exposed and abandoned to the cattle for divers years ; some of the 

 outward skirts were nothing, save shrubs and miserable starvelings ; yet 

 stiU the place was disposed to grow woody ; but by this neglect, con- 

 tinually suppressed. The industrious gentleman fenced in some acres of 

 this, and cut aU close to the ground ; and it is come in eight or nine 

 years to be better worth than the wood of sixty ; and will, in time, prove 

 most incomparable timber ; whilst the other part, so many years ad- 

 vanced, shall never recover ; and all this from no other cause than pre- 

 serving it fenced, Judge then, by this, how our woods come to be so 

 decried ; are five hundred sheep worthy the care of a shepherd ? And 

 are not f^ve thousand Oaks worth the fencing, and the inspection of an 

 hajrward ? 



Jit dubitant homines serere, atque impendere curam ? georg, il 



And shall men doubt to plant, and careful be ? 



Let US, therefore, shut up what we have thus laboriously planted, 

 with somQ good Quickset-hedge, 



The HA W THORN. 



The HAWTHORN " is raised of seeds ; but then it must not be with 

 despair, because sometimes you do not see them peep the first year; for the 



» CRATJiGUS ( oxYACAiiTHA ) foliis obtusis subtrifidis serratis, Lin. Sp. PI. 683. 

 CoMiiQ-t; H'HiTE-THORN. It is of the class and order Icosandria Digi/nia. 



The HAWTHORN, of all other Thorns, is the best calculated for forming a good 

 fence ; and in all new inclosures is solely applied to that purpose. The plants should, at 

 least, be three years old, with good roots, and put down in single rows, allowing four 



