NEW METHOD OF HEARING OAK. 235 



In the present mode of cultivating it, the person 

 who plants scarce ever lives to see it arrive at a bulk 

 large enough to render its timber useful for any of 

 the purposes for which oak is required ; but let it 

 be treated according to the above directions, and in 

 thirty or thirty-five years after the acorn is put into 

 the ground, the tree will be in a state of maturity 

 to qualify it, — not perhaps for becoming the princi- 

 pal timbers of a large ship, — but at least for boat- 

 building, and all the lighter and more minute parts 

 of naval architecture. 



There is another advantage not to be overlooked, 

 which this way of planting oaks has above the com- 

 mon or old system, namely, cheapness. To say no- 

 thing of the Scots firs and larches planted as nurses, 

 which, as we have already seen, will, at no very dis- 

 tant period, return a considerable profit, the most 

 expensive part of the process is the trenching of the 

 patches or squares. As, however, only 500 of them 

 are required in an acre (this number being amply 

 sufficient in a mode of planting where there is no 

 danger of the plants failing after they appear above 

 ground), the expense, for that extent, will not ex- 

 ceed nine shillings, if the ground is not more than 

 usually stony ; that is, at the rate of one shilling 

 and threepence per fall; and the same measure of 



