The Hazel. 



281. This, which is one of our most useful underwoods, 

 is the common Tree, which is too well known to us all 

 to make any very particular description of its height, size, 

 form, leaf, or any thing else belonging to it, necessary in 

 this place. There are several varieties of the nut, amongst 

 which are the Cob and the Filbert ; but the whole are pro- 

 pagated and cultivated in the same manner; except that, if 

 fruit be the object, you must propagate by suckers or layers, 

 and not from the nut ; for, if Cob-nuts or Filberts be sowed, 

 the fruit of the trees which come from them will, in all pro- 

 bability, be nothing more than the common nut. I mention 

 this incidentally, for these are matters of horticulture, and 

 have nothing to do with the rearing of timber trees' and 

 underwood. 



282. As underwood, the Hazel is a very useful plant. It 

 does not grow so fast as the Ash, as the Birch, as the 

 Chesnut, or as the Willow; but it produces a prodigious 

 number of shoots from its stem : it will bear the shade bet- 

 ter than almost any other underwood ; and, though its 

 shoots do not grow to poles, they make the best of rods, 

 small hoops, hurdles, hethers to hedges, very good stakes, 

 and are good for many minor purposes, particularly for the 

 making of vent-pegs. 



283. The Hazel grows best upon what is called a hazle- 

 mould : that is to say, mould of a reddish brown ; but it will 

 grow almost any^vhere, from a chalk or gravel to a cold and 

 wet clay ; but the rods are durable in proportion to the 

 dryness of the ground on which the Hazel grows, and they 

 are particularly good where the bottom is chalk. I have, 

 indeed, seen very beautiful coppices, with Hazel rods as 

 thick as they could stand, in a soil not more than from four 

 to six inches deep, a poor hungry soil too, lying upon a bed 



