THE planter's GUIDE. 



117 



Palings, hurdles, cordage, according to the taste and con- 

 sequence of the owners, are all employed for that 

 necessary end ; and those ponderous and unsightly 

 erections, when abundantly scattered over an extensive 

 and open surface, serve to fill the eye, and afford a 

 pleasing anticipation of what these stripling plants are 

 expected to do at a future day. As to the expense of 

 such barricadoes, (which will always last for five or six 

 years,) they hold it as insignificant, when compared with 

 the formidable cost of removing large trees. That cannot 

 be accomplished, they conceive, without heavy charges for 

 men and machinery, not to mention the contingency of a 

 fortuitous art ; whereas with young and healthy plants, 

 as they beheve, you have only to wait for a few years 

 with patience, when success, as in other things, must be 

 the reward of industry. 



I once knew a gentleman, not destitute of talents or 

 intelligence in rural afiuirs, who in this way had planted 

 about two-thirds of his place, which was of some extent, 

 though for the most part exposed to the west and south- 

 west. When I saw it, this arboricultural experiment had 

 gone on for about five-and-thirty years, and even the 

 owner had by that time begun to despair of its success. 

 A very few of the plants, meeting with a deep soil, and 

 with sites singularly sheltered, had got up to about twenty 

 feet high. The generality, and especially in trying ex- 

 posures, had grown to large bushes. What was once their 

 leading shoot had lost its pre-eminence over the side- 

 branches, plainly indicating that no further elongation of 

 the stem was to be expected. Moreover, they had begun, 

 like old trees, to be clump-headed, and to assume the ap- 

 pearance of premature old age. As to the expense of 

 the hurdles and pales, five or six times renewed, together 

 with the loss of the ground which they occupied, it 



