440 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



in the language, together with much good sense and judicious practice, 

 in several other departments. 



The truth is, although the public attention has been of late more 

 excited towards the important department of planting than heretofore, 

 it is yet too much regarded as a mechanical art. 1 entirely agree with 

 the judicious author of the "Encyclopaedia of Gardening" (from whom 

 much of what I have said above is taken) on the effect of culture on 

 trees, and that it is a branch of planting which seems to have been 

 wholly neglected by practical men. They appear, as he justly observes, 

 to have carried it on with reference to no other end than the increase 

 it produces on the qiiantity of timber. To exclude either pruning or 

 culture from a proper system of arboricultural management can never 

 be the design of any sound phytologist ; but they are both very question- 

 able agents in the hands of unscientific persons, and they can be em- 

 ployed by no one without extreme caution, and a due regard to those 

 laws which nature has established as paramount in her works, 



Messrs Withers and Pontey, the most distinguished advocates of these 

 practices, I take the liberty to think, have fallen into this general error ; 

 and, content with the hulk of the marketable article, and the shortness 

 of the time within which it can be produced, they have suffered the 

 solidity and durahility of timber to escape their notice. With a parti- 

 ality to culture nearly equal to Mr Withers', and deeming it applic- 

 able to many purposes to which it has not as yet been applied, I con- 

 ceive that the indiscriminate recommendation of aoiy practice, without 

 a mature consideration of its nature and consequences, is inconsistent 

 with sound science. We should reflect that the practice we have been 

 considering would, with all its excellence, if universally introduced, be 

 an evil the more formidable on this account, that its effects might not 

 become apparent until it was past a cure. 



Note V. Page 148. 



In the foregoing note, a good deal has been said respecting the nature 

 and use of trenching. I will now make a few observations on one of 

 the most important and interesting objects to which that process can 

 be applied — I mean the removal of Rushes from land. A greater im- 

 pediment to agricultural as well as arboricultural improvement cannot 

 exist, than this unsightly weed, because wherever there are rushes 

 there must be superfluous moisture ; and that excess of an indispensable 

 element is equally hostile to abundant grain-crops, good pasturage, 

 and good wood. 



To point out a method of eradicating the Rush eflfectually is a pro- 



