2S6 CULTURE AND MANAGEMENT OF OAK. 



barren land is often trenched as low as a shilling. 

 The expense of the lime for an acre will be about 

 three shillings, of the acorns one shilling, and of the 

 planting, including spreading and digging in of the 

 lime, about three shillings more ; so that the total 

 expense will not exceed sixteen shillings per acre. 

 This must be allowed to be remarkably cheap, com- 

 pared with the common way of planting in pits. 

 Oaks planted in this way, without nurses, and many 

 of them liable to go back from the effects of trans- 

 plantation, cannot, with propriety, be kept at a 

 greater distance from one another than four, or, at 

 most, four feet and a half. Between 3000 and 4000 of 

 them, therefore, will be required for every acre ; and 

 if they are, as they should be, at least five years old, 

 and have been transplanted in the nursery, the price 

 will not fall short of two pounds per thousand. Here 

 is an expense of from six to eight pounds per acre, 

 for plants alone, besides the cost of making the pits 

 and of planting the oaks, which together, will fall 

 little short of twenty shillings more. The expense 

 of planting oaks on the plan now proposed and ex- 

 plained, is, therefore, in no higher a ratio to that of 

 the common system, than one to nine ; that is, an 

 acre of land can be planted with acorns at one ninth 

 part of the expense at which the same extent can 



