DISTANCES AND ORDER OF PLANTS. 147 



vise that not fewer than three thousand trees per 

 acre be planted in good land, nor a less number 

 than four thousand, when the soil is of a middling 

 or inferior quality. 



When, however, we intend any of the deciduous 

 species, which require to remain in the nursery till 

 they are of a size that render their price high, and 

 the expense of planting them considerable, to be the 

 principal crop, it would be the height of folly to 

 place them nearer to one another than the distances 

 they may be supposed to require when they have 

 arrived at their full size. They should be planted 

 from sixteen to twenty-five or thirty feet asunder, 

 according to the richness of the soil ; and as many 

 firs planted among them, by way of nurses, as will 

 make the whole of the above mentioned thickness. 

 This so obvious method of saving expense is often 

 unaccountably neglected. 



On the order of the plants little need be said. It 

 was formerly the custom to place them in straight 

 lines, and a most absurd custom it was, as it gave 

 the wind a thoroughfare between every two rows of 

 trees ; so that the centre of the plantation was as 

 shelterless as the open plain. The effect on the eye 

 which a wood, planted on this principle, had when 

 it grew up, was in the highest degree formal and 



K 2! 



