Preparing the Ground. 



hardly have fetched an amount equal to the expenditure 

 and the interest, reckoning not a fiirtliing for the rent of 

 the land. There were, in this tract, ahout seven acres of 

 pretty good land in two little dells. Now, if the owner 

 had phuited these with ash, or with chesnut (not to mention 

 locust) at an expense of 12/. an acre, the seven acres 

 would, at the time when I saw the plantation, have yielded 

 him two cuttings, worth 15/. an acre the first cutting, and 

 25/. an acre the second. So that here woukl, in the space 

 of twenty-five years, have been (exclusive of fencing) an 

 expenditure of 84/., and a receipt of 280/. And, observe, 

 that, in this case, the stools, or stems, would still be ready 

 to go on producing similar crops, once in ten years, for 

 ages. But, then, alas ! the owner would have possessed 

 nothing but a bleak heath, with a couple of little coppices 

 in its dells, instead of being the lord of a " hundred acres 

 of woods" ! 



14. The first thing to be done, in the making of a planta- 

 tion, is to trench the ground to two feet deep at the least. 

 I shall first describe the work of trenching, and afterwards 

 give my reasons for the performing of it. You begin by 

 marking out with a line, two feet wide, on one side or end, 

 of your piece of ground. You strain your line across the 

 piece of ground, two feet from the outside of the piece. 

 Then the workmen chop with their spades along against 

 the line. Then, they measure another two feet, and chop 

 along again. When they have thus marked out a few 

 trenches, they begin digging out the first trench, the earth 

 of which, to the depth of two feet, they wheel away to the 

 other end of the piece, to be ready there to fill up the last 

 trench with. I am here supposing the ])iece of ground to 

 be so small as for the wheeling of the earth not to be 

 distant, and as to cause no inconvenience in taking the 



