148 



PLANTING OF WASTE LAND. 



unpleasant. In fir plantations, this was particu- 

 larly the case ; as from the stiff regular shape of 

 the tops of this kind of trees, their ranks were as 

 well defined at every period of their age as the 

 rows of a plot of newly planted cabbages in a kitchen 

 garden. The absurdity in question is now, how- 

 ever, universally exploded ; and it would be fighting 

 a shadow to say any thing farther in its discom- 

 mendation. In planting according to the method 

 last described in the preceding chapter, the work- 

 men proceed in lines ; but these, as was there ob- 

 served, are necessarily so crooked and zig-zag, as to 

 be quite undiscernible when the trees grow up. 



Much inconvenience is often experienced in large 

 plantations from the want of roads. When an ex- 

 tensive wood comes to require thinning, it is always 

 a work of extreme difficulty, sometimes of absolute 

 impossibility, for want of an open path, to get the 

 trees which are cut down carried from the interior 

 to the outside ; and they are, on this account, often 

 left to rot where they fall, by which means no ad- 

 vantage at all can be derived from them. It often 

 happens, too, when a wood is full grown, that those 

 trees which it would be most advisable to bring: first 

 to market, are situate not in or near the external 

 partSj but at the very centre ; in which case the 



