BILLINGTON ON PLANTING. 



189 



centre of the sod, with the roots as deep as the ori- 

 ginal surface ; the drains, being necessarily nume- 

 rous, afford turf sufficient for all the plants. This 

 is good. He also gives sensible directions to beat 

 down, hoe, or cut away all weeds, shrubs, and grass, 

 from the young plants, and to remove all rough 

 herbage and thickets of shrubs, that form harbour 

 for the short-tailed mouse, which is exceedingly de- 

 structive, in the case both of planting and sowing ; 

 in the former, by nibbling the bark from the stem, 

 and biting off the twigs of the young trees, (from 

 which om* author may have taken the hint of cutting 

 in, as mankind took that of pruning from the brows- 

 ing of the ass), and gnawing their roots immediately 

 below the surface of the ground ; and in the latter, 

 by devouring the seed in the ground, and cutting 

 down the seedling annual shoot. He also instructs 

 to keep the tree to one leader, shortening all strag- 

 gling large branches ; but his assertion, that plants 

 which had the tops of the straggling branches pinch- 

 ed off in the first part of summer, grew much larger 

 in consequence, looks rather absurd ; although we 

 have known a part of a hedge, clipped a week or two 

 after the growth had commenced in spring, grow 

 more luxuriantly than the part which had been 

 pruned in the same manner before the growth had 



