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THE planter's GUIDE. 



himself from cold. Wherever, says he, the wind enters, I 

 immediately stop the gap ; and the more gaps I stop, the 

 less the wind will enter : hence it follows that in time I 

 shall be completely secured against both wind and cold. 

 This gentleman's place, though it stands high, is in many 

 respects a noble one. It has picturesque features of a 

 striking sort, and it is, moreover, well covered with deep 

 masses of full-grown wood, arranged in all the rectilinear 

 dignity of a former day, in which here and there was ao 

 open and cheerful vista, from which we may suppose his 

 ancestors delighted to look out. All these, however, 

 from a rooted abhorrence of wind, he some years since 

 diligently planted up ; so that his mansion, when viewed 

 from without, is rather like a bird's nest in a thicket than 

 the grand and central object in an extensive and well- 

 wooded park. 



It was in vain that I pressed on my friend the necessity 

 of his freely, but gradually, thinning and opening up his 

 woods. It was in vain that I expatiated on the striking 

 similarity of the two kindred elements of air and water, 

 and on the extreme caution that is requisite in the 

 management of trees nearly at their best, so as to break 

 and dissipate the wind, thereby not only improving the 

 trees, but making a beneficial use of so uncertain an 

 element. It was to no purpose that I explained to him 

 the wise economy which nature displays, in modifying the 

 influence of heat and cold on the vegetable kingdom ; and 

 that if heat, during the infancy of trees, is necessary to the 

 full development of their parts, cold, in a due proportion, 

 is just as necessary at an after period : that therefore 

 it must follow, in all large masses of wood, where heat is 

 superabundant, and light insufliciently supplied, that a 

 progressive elongation of stem, and a progressive delicacy 

 of constitution, must be the consequence, and in time all 



