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NOTICES OF AUTHORS. 



the former might master the latter : or when some 

 strong growing variety overtops its congeners. In 

 the natural forest of America, when a clearance by 

 any means is effected, the young seedlings, generally 

 all of one kind, spring up so numerous, that, choak- 

 ing each other, they all die together in a few years. 

 This close springing up and dying is sometimes re- 

 peated several times over ; different kinds of trees 

 rising in succession, till the seeds in the soil be so 

 reduced as to throw up plants so far asunder as to 

 afford better opportunity for the larger growing va- 

 rieties to develope their strength; and, overpowering 

 the less, thus acquire spread of branches commensu- 

 rate to the height, and thence strength of constitu- 

 tion sufficient to bear them forward to large trees. 



Mr Monteath, apparently to encourage the de- 

 struction of yovmg oak, and keep his merciless hatchet 

 agoing, asserts that " oak trees, at the age of 24 

 or not exceeding 30 years, have as thick a rind or 

 fleshy part of bark, as when they arrive at 50." If 

 by this he means to say, that the useful part of the 

 oak bark of the stem of a tree at 50 years old is no 

 thicker than that of one of 30, we say he is wrong, 

 widely wrong. A thriving oak tree of 100 years will 

 still continue to increase the thickness of the valuable 

 part of the bark on the stem, although part of the 



