Cultivation after Planting 



88. It is quite clear^ therefore^ that all trees feed upon the 

 same sort of nourishment ; and that, by planting different 

 sorts of trees in the same plantation, you gaia nothing by 

 this imaginary difference in their tastes. But you lose a 

 great deal by mixing them in a plantation. There are no 

 two sorts that keep pace exactly with each other in point 

 of growth. Some sorts increase in circumference of stem, 

 and mount more slowly, than others. Some go up with 

 side branches, not much extended ; others spread out very 

 much, and of course mount not so fast. It is impossible, 

 then, that in a mixed plantation, the growth in point 

 of height should be uniform ; and, if it be not uniform, some 

 trees must be shaded by others. This shading soon brings 

 drip along with it; and though the Hazel, the Willow, and 

 some other sorts of underwood, will, to a certain extent, 

 live, and grow a little under drip, even they will not thrive 

 in such a situation; for who has ever seen a wood, nearly 

 the whole of the ground of which was shaded with lofty 

 trees, and seen at the same time and in the same ground 

 a thriving underwood ? 



89. But, besides the shade arising from the inequality in 

 the growth of trees, there is the inequality in the portion 

 of food. One sort of tree devours a great deal more than 

 another. Its roots are more numerous, larger, spread 

 about to a greater extent, and actually starve trees of 

 another sort standing near it. I will venture to engage 

 that if a Locust tree were planted with a Lime, a Horse 

 Chesnut, a Beech, and even an Elm, all planted at the 

 same time, and being of the same size and height, and all 

 the rest standing within two feet of the Locust tree; I will 

 engage that, at the end of ten years, the Locust tree would 

 have destroyed, or made next to nothing of, all the others, 

 while it would be a tree of thirty or forty feet high, extend- 



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