THE planter's GUIDE. 



39 



economics, in the end of the last century. Marshall was 

 bj profession a West Indian planter ; but on coming 

 home, in 1775, he dedicated his attention to planting and 

 landscape gardening, and in general to rm^al affairs, in all 

 of which he displayed considerable skill. He is one of 

 the few among our writers who studied the removal of 

 large trees as an art, and laid down rules to regulate the 

 execution. His precepts, therefore, as well as his prac- 

 tice, are entitled to regard, not only from their own 

 intrinsic value, but as they serve to bring down the 

 history of the art nearly to the present day. 



This judicious writer was too well aware of the difficulty 

 and hazard of removing large-sized trees of any sort, to prac- 

 tise on subjects of great magnitude. For " thinning plan- 

 tations," he says, " for removing obstructions, or hiding 

 defects, or for raising ornamental groups or single trees 

 expeditiously," he conceives that the practice may be 

 recommended ; but he declares it to be decidedly " the 

 most difficult part of planting," and therefore is of opinion 

 that it is inapplicable to general purposes, and not often 

 practised, for any purpose, " with uniform success."''^ 



At the various places where Marshall was considted, 

 whether as a landscape gardener or a surveyor of estates, 

 he frequently gave specimens of transplanting, and these 

 were conducted with a skill certainly unequalled by any 

 one who had preceded him, and which no one who follows 

 him will easily surpass, with the same sort of subjects. 

 Yet it is sm^prising that a planter so conversant with 

 practice, a man, too, of talents and information hke Mar- 

 shall, seems not to have arrived at any acquaintance with 

 principles. After succeeding in a manner superior to 

 most others, was it not natural that he should have 



* Rm-al Ornament, vol. i. pp.4041. 



