112 



THE planter's GUIDE. 



Before proceeding to deliver any specific rules on this 

 important topic, perhaps the best way will be to attempt 

 an indirect road to our purpose, by enumerating the most 

 common errors committed by planters in their choice of 

 subjects ; and then by endeavouring shortly to account, 

 from the laws of nature, for the ill success that has 

 attended such selection. 



The most common errors which injudicious planters 

 commit appear to be of three different kinds : first, they 

 bestow no pains or care in the adaptation of trees to the 

 particular soils in which they are calculated to thrive ; 

 secondly, they have recourse to close woods and planta- 

 tions for the supply of subjects ; and thirdly, they set 

 out plants at too early an age, and of too diminutive 

 a size, into the open field. 



First, as to the non-adaptation of trees to their pro- 

 per soils. All plants, woody or herbaceous, seem to be 

 fitted by nature to grow best in particular soils and sub- 

 soils, in which they thrive more luxuriantly than in 

 others. This is a fact which is, or should be, familiar to 

 all planters. In other departments, such as husbandry, 

 it is universally understood. No farmer of intelligence 

 ever errs in adapting his crops to the soils most proper 

 for them, or puts his wheat or his beans where his 

 barley or turnip should be put, or vice versa. Not so, 

 however, the planter ; for nine times in ten he pays no 

 regard to adaptation, but puts the same trees indiscri- 

 minately on every soil. Even late practical writers of 

 name and authority advocate the practice, and recom- 

 mend that mixed plantations of all trees should univer- 

 sally be made, with the design, as they allege, of 

 producing " a greater weight of wood" than by any 

 other method. This is a system which, to say the least, 

 sets little value on experience. In fact, it equahses all 



