OF FOREST-TREES. 227 



pairing deformities, because they grew so well when first they were set : CHAP. III. 

 it is to be considered how exceedingly that pernicious smoke of the sea- ^-'"'Y^^ 

 coal is increased in and about London since they were first planted, and 

 the buildings environing them, and inclosing it in among them, which 

 does so universally contaminate the air, that when plantations of trees 

 shall be now begun in any of those places, they will have much ado, 

 great difficulty, and require a long time to be brought to perfection : 

 therefore, let them make much of what they have ; and though I dis- 

 courage none, yet I can animate none to cut down the old. 



And here might now come in a pretty speculation, what should be the 

 reason after general fellings, and extirpations of vast woods of one 

 species, the next spontaneous succession should be of quite a different 

 sort ? We see, indeed, something of this in our gardens and corn-fields, as 

 the best of poets witnesseth, but that may be much imputed to the altera- 

 tion, by improvement or detriment of the soil, and other accidents. — 

 Whatever the cause may be, since it appears not from any universal de- 

 cay of nature, (sufficiently exploded,) I shall only here produce matter 

 of fact, and that it ordinarily happens. As in some goodly woods formerly 

 belonging to my grandfather, that were all of Oak, after felling, they 

 universally sprung up Beech ; and it is affirmed by general experience, 

 that after Beech, Birch succeeds, as in that famous wood at Tarnway, on 

 the river Findorn, in the province of Murray, in Scotland, where nothing 

 had grown but Oak in a wood three miles in length ; and haply more 

 southerly, it might have been Beech, and not Birch, till the third degra- 

 dation. Birches familiarly grow out of old and decayed Oaks; but whence 

 this sympathy and aflfection should proceed, is more difficult to resolve, 

 inasmuch as we do not detect any so prolifical and eminent seed in that 

 tree. Some accidents of that nature, may be imputed to the winds and 

 the birds that frequently have been known to waft and convey seeds to 

 places widely distant, as we have touched in the chapter of Firs. Holly 

 has been seen to grow out of Ash, as Ash out of several trees ; and I have 

 it confidently asserted by persons of undoubted truth, that they have seen 

 a tree cut in the middle, whose heart was Ash-wood, and the exterior 

 part Oak, and this in Northamptonshire. And why not as well (though 

 with something more difficulty) as through a Willow, whose body (as is 

 noted) it has been observed to penetrate even to the earth, detruding the 



