The Birch. 



but consider, that a cucumber-frame, of three or four lights, 

 will give you from ten to twenty thousand trees, with as 

 much certainty as you can have any plant of any kind. 

 From the seed-bed the plants go into a niu'sery, where they 

 are treated in precisely the same manner as directed for 

 treating the seedlings of the Ash. 



162. For the want of knowing how to manage the seed- 

 beds of this tree, recourse is had to the coppices; and I 

 venture to say, that one thousand plants obtained in that 

 way, must, on an average of cases, cost as much as the 

 raising of ten thousand, in the manner above directed ; be- 

 sides that the plants from the coppices must necessarily 

 be poor scrubby things compared with those raised in beds. 



163. The PLANTING OUT of the Birch is performed 

 in precisely the same way as that directed in the case of the 

 Ash. Four feet each way is quite thick enough ; and the 

 produce, if the plantation be duly attended to, is very great; 

 for the shoots of the Birch grow erect; great numbers 

 come out of a stem ; they grow fast ; and they suffer from 

 nothing but actually cropping or breaking off. 



164. As to FELLING, the Birch, like all other under- 

 woods, is cut when the leaf is off. The finer spray is selected 

 for brooms; the straight rods for barrel hoops, or hurdles; 

 the short and stout and straight parts, for broom handles; and 

 the rough stufJ' for fagots, or fuel, in some shape or other. 

 The better the ground, the faster the shoots will grow, and 

 the sooner they will be fit to cut; but the Birch ought not 

 to stand till it become poles ; tor, as such, it is good for 

 very little. Where there is Birch, there ought, in the same 

 underwood, to be nothing hut Birch; because, if with Hazel, 

 for instance, it ought to be cut sooner than the Hazel, and 



