482 



KOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



succeeding with a retentive subsoil. But, happening accidentally to 

 make a deep pit near the place, I discovered that this clay, which I had 

 taken for the subsoil, was merely one of those accidental veins or argilla- 

 ceous strata, of twelve or fourteen inches in thickness, which so often 

 occur in coal countries ; and that the real substratum, which lay imme- 

 diately under it, was a bed of pure sand more than six feet deep. 



Note III. Page 337. 



The Norway Maple is said to be Acer platanoides, foliis quinquelohis 

 acuminatis acute, dentatis glahris, florihus cori/mbosis. — Lin. Spec. Plant. 

 1496. 



Note IV. Page 388. 



The tree here alluded to, is the Lace or Lime Oak of America, {Q. 

 virens.) I by no means say, that it is impossible that the sea-breeze is 

 requisite to bring it to perfection, but from what we know of the nature 

 and properties of trees, it certainly appears improbahle in a very high 

 degree. 1 trust, therefore, that I may be forgiven for the disposition to 

 incredulity respecting this matter which I have taken the liberty to 

 manifest, in Note III. at page 463 ante. An ingenious and respectable 

 writer, Dr Yule, (in the memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural 

 Society, vol. ii. p. 3/8,) seems to have first mentioned the tree alluded 

 to. Lace Oak, and its supposed extraordinary properties, on the autho- 

 rity of Michaux, and other French authors ; and the account is 

 implicitly copied by another late respectable writer on plantations 

 — Rev. G. J. Hamilton, (Trans. Highl. Soc, vol. v. p. 306,) without 

 remark or animadversion. Query ; are these ingenious writers practical 

 planters themselves ? 



It is to be regretted that, on an art like planting, where the errors 

 we commit can be discovered only after much loss and disappointment, 

 and the lapse of years, that any thing should be written by men of 

 science that is not strictly practical. It is, however, a material point 

 that they should distinguish in their writings between what is conjec- 

 tural and what is certain in such an art — between what may succeed, 

 and what actually lias succeeded in the execution. No one would 

 rejoice more heartily than myself to find it proved, by actual experi- 

 ment, that a plantation of the Quercus virens had vigorously flourish- 

 ed, and come to maturity, on the margin of the Atlantic or the 

 German Ocean, while it languished or altogether failed in the internal 

 districts ; and, in the same way, I should rejoice to learn that the 

 Norway Maple as effectually resisted the sea-breeze as the Sycamore : 



