308 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK III. dibly reported, that even our famous forest of Dean hath been utterly 

 wasted no less than three several times within the space of nine hundred 

 years. The prince elector, Frederic IV. in the year 1606, sowed a part 

 of tliat most barren heath of Lamhertheim with acorns after ploughing, as 

 • 1664. I have been informed : it is now * likely to prove a most goodly forest, 

 though all this while miserably neglected by reason of the wars. For the 

 care of planting trees should indeed be recommended to princes and great 

 persons, who have the fee of the estate ; tenants upon the rack, by rea- 

 son of the tedious expectation andjealousy of having their rents enhanced, 

 are, for the most part, averse to this husbandry ; so that unless the 

 landlord will be at the whole charge of planting and fencing, (without 

 which as good no planting,) little is to be expected ; and whatsoever is 

 proposed to them above their usual course, is looked upon as the whim 

 and fancy of speculative persons, which they turn into ridicule when they 

 are applied to action ; and this (says an ingenious and excellent husband, 

 whose observations have afforded me no little treasure) might be the rea^ 

 son why the prime writers of all ages endeavoured to involve their dis- 

 courses with allegories and enigmatical terms, to protect them from the 

 contempt and pollution of the vulgar, which has been of some ill con- 

 sequence in husbandry ; for that very few writers of worth have adven- 

 tured upon so plain a subject, though doubtless to any considering per- 

 son, the most delightful kind of natural philosophy, and that which 

 employs the most useful part of the mathematics. 



The right honourable the late lord viscount Montague has planted 

 many thousands of Oaks, which, I am told, he draws out of coppices, 

 big enough to defend themselves ; and that with such success as has ex- 

 ceedingly improved his possessions ; and it is a worthy example. To 

 conclude, I could have shewn an avenue planted to a house standing in a 

 barren park, the soil a cold clay ; it consisted totally of Oaks, one hundred 

 in number : the person who first set them, dying very lately, lived to see 

 them spread their branches one hundred and twenty-three feet in compass, 

 which, at the distance of twenty-four feet, mingling their shady tresses for 

 above a thousand in length, formed themselves into one of the most vene- 

 rable and stately arbour- walks that in my life I ever beheld : this was at 

 Baynards in Surry, and belonging lately to my most honoured brother (a 

 most industrious planter of wood) Richard Evelyn, Esq. — since trans- 

 planted to a better world : the walk is fifty-six feet broad, one tree with 

 another containing, by estimation, three quarters of a load of timber, and 



