OF FOREST-TREES. 



295 



crifice for the royal Oaks, and their Hamadryads, to whom they owe CHAP, 

 more than a slight submission : and he that should deeply consider the 

 prodigious waste which these voracious iron and glass-works have formerly 

 made but in one county alone, the county of Sussex, for one hundred 

 and twenty miles in length, and thirty in breadth (for so wide and 

 spacious was the ancient Andradswald, of old one entire wood, but of 

 which there remains now little or no sign,) would be touched with no 

 mean indignation. I named the Sussex glass-works ; but what spoil and 

 prodigious consumption the salt-works had made in Worcestershire, see 

 the complaint of Mr. Camden, speaking of Feckenham-forest in his 

 days, now necessitated to use other coal ; certainly the goodly rivers 

 and forests of the other world would much better become these destruc- 

 tive works, our iron-works and saw-mills, than these exhausted coun- 

 tries, and we prove gainers by the timely removal : I have said this 

 already, and I cannot too often inculcate it for the concerns of a nation, 

 whose only protection (under God) are her ivooden walls. 



Another thing to be recommended (and which would prove no less 

 than thirty, in some places forty, and generally twenty years' advance) 

 were a good, if well executed, act, to save our standards and bordering 

 trees from the axe of the neighbourhood : and who would not preserve 

 timber, v/hen within so few years the price is almost quadrupled ? I 

 assure you standards of twenty, thirty, or forty years' growth, are of a 

 long day for the concernments of a nation. 



And though we have, in our general chapter of coppices, declared what 

 by our laws and common usages is expected at every fell, (and which is 

 indeed most requisite, till our store be otherwise supplied,) yet might 

 much even of that rigour be abated, by no unfrugal permissions to take 

 down more of the standards for the benefit of the underwoods, (especially 

 where, by over-di-opping and shade, they interrupt the kindly dews, rains, 

 and influences, which nourish them,) provided that there were a propor- 

 tionable number of timber-trees duly and thoroughly planted and pre- 

 served in the hedge-rows and bordures of our grounds ; in which case, 

 even the total clearing of some coppices would be to their great advance, 

 as by sad experience has been taught some good husbands, whose 

 necessities sometimes forced them to violate their standards, and more 

 grown trees, during the late tyranny. 



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