LETTER XIX. 



207 



nests, frogs, stones, and such-like in the very heart 

 of trees, enclosed and completely buried in sound 

 wood. It will also have a rehgious and moral use, as 

 I shall endeavour to show you in my next letter. 



3. But the use and application of the theory which 

 I have in view at present is a material one — such as 

 the gardener may turn to account in the management 

 of his fruit-trees, the farmer in that of his orchards, 

 and, above all, the forester in that of his plantations, 

 and of the park or ornamental timber. I have no 

 doubt, indeed (assuming it now, as I think we may, to 

 be a true theory), that it may be useful in that way ; 

 and I have in my mind one or two uses which it seems 

 to me it may serve. But 1 beg to observe, in the first 

 place, that having myself had no practical experience 

 in matters of this kind — having lived all my days in 

 towns (which Cowper says " man made," and in the 

 making of which he ruthlessly lays the axe to the root 

 of the aboriginal occupants of the ground), and not in 

 the country (which the same authority says God 

 made," and where these find their proper field, and 

 receive fitting treatment) — you will not expect that I 

 should be so ready in the practical as in the theoretical 

 department of my subject ; and, in the second place, 

 that it is no fair test of the merits of a theory that the 

 proposer of it should be able to point out the applica- 

 tions of it. Galvanism was for a very long time little 

 else than a barren theorv, and Galvani, who first 



