SECTION VI. 



435 



pose of constructing British ships of war. Whether high cultivation 

 and manuring should now be introduced over the whole royal forests, 

 because Mr Withers in Norfolk is raising good wood by that method, 

 and has written two successful pamphlets on the subject, is a question 

 of some public interest. I must say, it is a method of obtaining the most 

 durable Oak timber which is certainly new, and is contradicted by all 

 existing facts, as well as all former practice. Those facts, therefore, 

 are deserving of a short consideration, which is all that the limits of 

 the present discussion will admit. 



The effects of Culture on the whole kingdom of vegetables (as the 

 author of the "Encyclopaedia of Gardening" well observes) are so great as 

 always to change their appearance, and in a considerable degree to 

 change their nature. Culture, as phytologists admit, has nearly the 

 same tendency towards affecting the growth of plants as the removing 

 of them to a better climate, by expanding the parts of the entire vege- 

 table. To any one at all acquainted with vegetable economy this is well 

 known, and it is remarkable in all culinary vegetables and cultivated 

 grasses, which assume an appearance in our gardens and fields, widely 

 different from that which they display in their wild and natural state. 

 In the same manner, the absence of culture, or the removing the vege- 

 table to a colder climate, and a worse soil, tends to contract or consolidate 

 the plant. 



The same general law operates in a similar way on all woody plants, 

 but of course less rapidly, owing to the less rapid growth of trees, from 

 the lowest bush to the Oak of the forest. In all of these the culture 

 of the soil tends to accelerate vegetatimi, and, by consequence, to expand 

 the fibre of the wood. It necessarily renders it softer, less solid, and more 

 liable to suffer by the action of the elements. Let us shortly give a few 

 examples of the uniform effect of this law of nature. 



Every forester is aware how greatly easier it is to cut over thorns or 

 furze that are trained in hedges than such as grow naturally wild, and 

 are exempt from culture. Gardeners experience the same thing, in 

 pruning or cutting over fruit-trees or shrubs ; and the difference in the 

 texture of the raspberry, in its wild and in its cultivated state, is as 

 remarkable — for although the stem in the latter state is nearly double 

 the thickness of that in the former, it is much more easily cut. On 

 comparing the common Crab, the father of our orchards, with the 

 cultivated Apple, the greater softness of the wood of the latter will be 

 found not less striking to every arboriculturist. 



Further, the common Oak in Italy and Spain, where it grows faster 

 than in Britain, is ascertained to be of shorter duration in those coun- 



