OF FOREST-TREES. 



257 



. We will begin with that sort which is used for the iron-works, be- CHAP, 

 cause the rest are made much after the same manner, and with very ^ 

 little difference. 



The best wood for this is good Oak, cut into lengths of three feet, as 

 they size it for the stack : this is better than the cord-wood, though of 

 a large measure, and much used in Essex. 



The wood being cut, and set in stacks ready for the coaling, choose out 

 some level place in the coppice, the most free from stubs, &c. to make 

 the hearth on : in the midst of this area drive down a stake for your centre, 

 and with a pole, having a ring fastened to one of the extremes, (or else 

 with a cord put over the centre,) describe a circumference from twenty or 

 more feet semi-diameter, according to the quantity of your wood de- 

 signed for coaling, which being near, may conveniently be charred on 

 that hearth ; and which at one time may be twelve, sixteen, twenty, 

 twenty-four, even to thirty stacks : if twelve, therefore, be the quantity 

 you will coal, a circle, whose diameter is twenty-four feet, will suffice 

 for the hearth ; if twenty stacks, a diameter of thirty-two feet ; if 

 thirty, forty feet ; and so proportionably. 



Having thus marked out the ground with mattocks, hoes, and fit in- 

 struments, bare it of the turf, and of all other combustible stuff whatso- 

 ever, which you are to rake up towards the periphery, or outside of the 

 circumference, for a use to be afterwards made of it, planing and level- 

 fing the ground within the circle : this done, the wood is to be brought 

 from the nearest part where it is stacked, in wheel-barrows ; and first the 

 smallest of it placed at the utmost limit, or very margin of the hearth, 

 where it is to be set long-ways, as it lay in the stack ; the biggest of the 

 wood pitch or set up on end round about against the small wood, and all 

 this within the circle, till you come within five or six feet of the centre ; 

 at which distance you shall begin to set the wood in a triangular from 

 till it come to be three feet high : against this again, place your greater 

 wood almost perpendicular, reducing it from the triangular to a circular 

 form, till, being come within a yard of the centre, you may pile the 

 wood long- ways, as it lay in the stack, being careful that the ends of the 

 wood do not touch the pole, which must now be erected in the centre, 

 nine feet in height, that so there may remain a round hole, which is to 

 be formed in working up the stack-wood for a tunnel, and the more 



