THE planter's GUIDE. 



231 



tlie most profitable stock for a park consisting of forty or 

 fifty acres and upwards, is unquestionably sheep. Sheep 

 love a wide range of pasturage, and are not found fully to 

 thrive, or to be kept with facility, within a less extensive 

 circuit than the one just now specified. Unless your 

 wood be of considerable age, deer, independently of the 

 great difficulty of restraining them, prove extremely 

 troublesome ; and black cattle and horses, from their 

 height and uncommon fondness for the tender shoots of 

 most woody plants, would shockingly disfigure the gene- 

 rahty of removed trees, of which the efibct chiefly results 

 from the beauty of their spreading boughs, at from about 

 four to seven and eight feet from the ground. The 

 browsing-line of the blackfaced sheep seldom reaches to 

 more than three, or three feet and a half, above the sur- 

 face ; a height which gives lightness rather than other- 

 wise to park scenery, while the formality which the 

 browsing-line is thought to occasion is very easily done 

 away by any one acquainted with the commonest arrange- 

 ments in real landscape. To protect trees efi<ectually, 

 however, from the rubbing of sheep, is a work which we 

 seldom see well executed ; because, to do it well, both 

 neatness and utility should be combined in the execution. 



The guards generally in use for protecting trees are 

 well known — hurdles and cordage of different kinds ; 

 three-cornered, four-cornered, and circular pahngs, and 

 the like ; black or white-thorn branches ; wrappings of 

 straw or mat, and even of painted sailcloth, have been all 

 employed on various occasions. Of these contrivances, 

 the thorns are injurious to the wool of the sheep, and the 

 different wrappings to the trees ; and both act in exclud- 

 ing the sun and air from the stem. In respect to the 

 hurdles and palings, they appear always cumbersome, and, 

 if numerous, form too prominent a feature in a park. 



