414 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



some parts of England, with great effect. This person, who is not less 

 unassuming than he is ingenious, is possessed of valuable materials for 

 a treatise on the subject ; by which, besides laying down specific rules 

 for the art under different circumstances, directions might be given for 

 raising and managing plantations under this system. According to the 

 author's opinion, the pruning should be practised as early as the third 

 year after the plantations are made, and be continued till the eight- 

 eenth or twentieth. He has likewise constructed tables, showing the 

 number and distances according to which the trees should be planted on 

 an acre of ground, and the comparative results of the ordinary and of 

 the terminal method. In the present low state of our arboricultural 

 knowledge, I am of opinion that a present more acceptable than such 

 a treatise could not be made to the British public. 



I request forgiveness of the reader for this long discussion, which 

 has altogether transcended the bounds of a note, and swelled to a sort 

 of disquisition. But, independently of my own observations on the 

 above interesting subject, I was desirous to give as much publicity as 

 possible to Mr Loudon's ingenious speculations, and to the Terminal 

 Method of Pkuning, which promises to be productive of such general 

 utility. 



Note VI. Page 99. 



It gives me great satisfaction to find that the opinions here held, 

 respecting the character of the ramification on the warmer and the 

 colder sides of trees, are supported by those of a scientific planter, and 

 ingenious observer, the late Lord Meadowbank, whose important dis- 

 covery of the method of decompounding peat, by means of animal 

 manure, is so well known to the agriculturist. To a pamphlet printed 

 in Edinburgh in 1815, in which the theory last mentioned is clearly 

 given, there is annexed a small tract, entitled " Instructions to 

 Foresters," in which he states as follows : — " If trees are vexed by the 

 winds of an exposed situation, but not destroyed by them, their lateral 

 shoots towards the exposed point are shortened, and the branches mul- 

 tiplied ; and a similar appearance may be expected at the tops of lofty 

 trees, however naturally vigorous, which have reached an unsheltered 

 situation, where the winds sweep along the upper surface of the forest 

 without interruption. These winds must prove unfavourable to the 

 quiet deposition of prepared sap, on which growth must in some degree 

 depend ; but of course, the surplus sap will be employed by the plastic 

 powers of most trees in multiplying buds and branches, which, how- 

 ever, must be comparatively short and crowded together. And accord- 

 ing to the wise economy of nature, as very often happens, there is 



