THE planter's GUIDE. 



271 



power was unknown to the public, and he resolved to 

 avail himself of it in his own improvements. Instead of 

 indolently trusting to others, he ardently entered into the 

 details of the execution. He often became the director 

 of his own work ; and so rapid was his advancement in 

 practical skill that, in the space of a fortnight, he removed 

 trees of thirty and five-and-thirty feet high, and of great 

 thickness, with the utmost success. 



The effects at once produced on so bold and beautiful 

 a subject, on which not a tree nor a bush had previously 

 stood, were as astonishing as they were delightful. 

 When I saw the place in the spring of 1825, several 

 groups of fine foreground trees, with extensive tops, were 

 already formed, and had attracted the notice of the 

 scientific and the curious. All united in admiration of 

 the skill and ingenuity of the planter ; but no one who 

 saw the trees, except Mr Smith himself, was prepared to 

 beheve that they could without propping withstand the 

 western gales. The old men about the place reminded 

 him that, at the equinox, those blasts were so terrific as 

 sometimes to endanger even the stoutest of his trees, 

 which had been reared on the ground for nearly a century, 

 and which must far exceed in stability any plants that 

 art or ingenuity could at once bring upon an open surface. 

 The gardener, who was a planter of the old school, loudly 

 declared, that " all the men in Renfrewshire could not 

 keep them up in the face of a real and genuine south- 

 wester, unless their heads were taken off, according to the 

 good old method.'^ Yet, notwithstanding these confident 

 opinions and disastrous anticipations, not one of the trees 

 has ever been moved or blown down ; and, from their 

 healthy appearance, they promise to continue fine 

 examples of the art, and especially of the use of the 

 retaining-bank in transplanting in the west of Scotland. 



