xxiv 



MEMOIE OF THE AUTHOR. 



growing in the shelter of extensive plantations, were not of 

 that hardy character which jour system requires as fit sub- 

 jects of experiment. I caused numbers of them to be cut 

 round, however, and transplanted with bare roots, and 

 turning the lea side to the weather. They stood the winds 

 very well. In a sheltered place at the bottom of a bank, 

 about ten or a dozen throve amazingly ; they hardly seemed 

 to acknowledge a change of situation. In more exposed 

 situations they did very well the first and second years, 

 but several in the third year became unsightly, with 

 withered boughs, and I have cut them over. In none of 

 these cases of failure do I consider your system as having 

 had fair-play, a^ the trees were thin in the stem, taU, and 

 the exact reverse of what they should have been. I believe 

 however, they could all, or almost all, have succeeded to a 

 considerable extent, but for the drought of the season ^ 

 1816. A small fish-pond gave facility for watering those 

 which were planted beside it, and not one of them was 

 lost. I am, therefore, led to the same conclusion to which' 

 Count Rumford was conducted in investigating the food of 

 the poor — namely, that there is much sustenance in water 

 alone. Besides these attempts, I took a more irregular, 

 nay, almost desperate mode of thinning my hardwood 

 plantations. Besides cutting down what I designed for 

 underwood, I transferred several hundreds with little 

 ceremony to a sheep pasture covered with whins, and took 

 no other precaution than causing them to be carefully 

 planted and trod in — choosing places where the fm:ze might 

 defend them against the sheep. This can hardly be called 

 transplanting trees, properly so caUed, for they are only 

 young plants of from six to ten feet high. They have 

 thriven very weU, though in a manner abandoned to their 

 fate. I do not beheve that there have been lost ten out of 

 a hundred, or any thing like it. I would advise any gen- 



