430 



NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS. 



stances, as it is in England.* Had some conceited .Scotch gardener, 

 now fattening in that country, committed this " fundamental error" 

 in a public statement, and on the title-page of a book, we should not 

 have been so much surprised, and attributed it merely to ignorance ; 

 but as it is, it certainly must appear very striking in a person of Mr 

 Withers' education and intelligence. By a statement so often and so 

 confidently repeated, uninformed readers are led to believe that, in the 

 arboriculture of Scotland, there are some strange and peculiar modes of 

 executing large designs of wood, quite different from those known in 

 England, and which its gardeners (who every where abound) are desi- 

 rous, from some unintelligible motive, to introduce into the latter coun- 

 try. "Whereas the truth is, as I have more than once stated in the 

 present work, that it is to the English alone that the Scotch are 

 indebted for any knowledge they possess of the useful arts, and of that 

 of planting among others ; that they are ambitious to practise, and do 

 practise them, solel?/ after the English methods ; and if they ever 

 venture on any improvements of their own, (which in this instance has 

 not been the case,) that it is with becoming deference to such able 

 instructors. It is therefore to be hoped that so judicious a writer as 

 Mr Withers, when he next publishes on the same subject, will correct 

 a statement which is unfounded in point of fact, and besides, rather 

 savours of national prejudice — a feeling decidedly illiberal, and alto- 

 gether out of fashion in the present day. 



The very favourable manner in which Mr Withers' first j)amphlet 

 was received by the public was, of course, very gratifying to the author, 

 and seems to have led him to assert the universal applicability of the 

 trenching method. What was good for Norfolk, he naturally thought, 

 could not well be bad for any other tract of country, w^hether the 

 Highlands of Perthshire, or Yorkshire, or Connaught ; and that what- 

 ever system of planting was calculated to produce (as Pontey expresses 

 it) "the greatest weight of marketable wood," and to produce it soonest 

 and cheapest, must necessarily be the best for all possible purposes, 

 whether manufacturing, agricultural, or naval. Fully impressed with 



* M. De Pertlmis is of the opinion usually entertained in England, and also 

 by Sir Walter Scott, that trenching with the spade is too expensive to be prac- 

 tised by the landowner, unless for plantations intended for ornament near the 

 mansion-house. On sent que le defoncement ne peut etre fait qvJa hras dliommes; 

 et comme il occasiooine une grande defense au proprietaire, il ne peut gueres 

 employer ce moyen, lorsque ses facultes pecuniaires le lui permettent, que dans les 

 plantations destinies a la decoration de sa raaison. — P. 282. The French have 

 likewise an odd way of cultivating plantations, en rayons, that is, in narrow 

 strips for the trees, leaving the intervals uncultivated. 



