408 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Pontey, an intelligent nurseryman and planter of Huddersfield, in 

 1806 published a treatise, entitled, "Tiie Forest Pruner, or Timber- 

 Owner's Assistant ; " and the simplicity of the system there delineated, 

 not less than its merit, soon contributed to bring it into very general 

 repute. But if the truth must be spoken, I fear that it has done more 

 injury, as well as more good, to the woods of Britain, than any other 

 work that has appeared within a century. Great good it has unques- 

 tionably done, wherever the system it recommends has been cautiously 

 modified and controlled by science ; and injury as certainly, where 

 the instructions of the author have been literally followed out. The 

 radical error of Pontey lay in this — that having once discovered, by cut- 

 ting away the side-branches, that the stem was capable of being elon- 

 gated, and its bulk in certain cases increased, he naturally enough 

 thought that too many side-branches could not be cut away. But let 

 any one acquainted with phytological science, or the anatomy of plants, 

 only cast his eye on the frontispiece of that treatise, which furnishes a 

 specimen of the art of pruning as approved and practised by its 

 author, and to such a person no more needs be said on the subject. 

 Here he will perceive the delineation of an immense tree, by name "the 

 Woburn Beech,'' belonging to the Duke of Bedford, and growing at 

 that place — a tree more than seventy feet in height, and pruned up to 

 fifty from the ground, without a twig or a branch ; and yet this great 

 sweeping brush is held forth as an example of perfect pruning, and such 

 as is calculated to increase the value, as well as the weight of the wood ! 

 See Forest Pruner, p. 150, et seq. 



Now, eminent as all men must acknowledge Pontey to be in 

 experience as a nurseryman and a planter, and that he has brought out 

 a work in which much useful knowledge and practical skill are dis- 

 played, yet it is a curious fact, that he seems not to have been much 

 acquainted with vegetable physiology and the anatomy of plants, and, 

 by consequence, with the double current of the sap in trees. Whoever 

 attentively examines his treatise, (and especially from p. 48 to 58, and 

 p. 150, et seq.,) will perceive that he believed that the sap in trees 

 " ascends in the bark ; " that the main ofiice of the branches is " to 

 produce and maintain a certain quantity of leaves ; " and that the 

 business of the leaves is "to attract the sap upwards ! " (Pp. 155, 156.) 

 If such be the principles of science on which this system of pruning is 

 founded, there is little wonder that it should prove erroneous when 

 applied to practice. What should we think, in the present day, of a 

 scientific agriculturist who was unacquainted with the chemical affini- 

 ties ? or of an astronomer who assumed, as the basis of a new system, 

 that the sun and planets moved round the earth ? Yet it is singular 



