The Locust. 



it is not a piece of stuff that was cut out of the heart of a 

 tree; but the whole of a little tree that was put into the 

 ground, bark and all ; and that was, in all probability, not 

 above seven or eight years old, 



349. The quickness of growth is a great consideration ; 

 because every man will say, that, if this tree will grow in 

 England, and will grow faster than any other tree, to intro- 

 duce it must be a benefit greater than can be easily described. 

 1 am going to state the actual measurement of my own plant- 

 ing, at three different times ; that is to say, in 1807, in 1809, 

 and 1813. But, I must go back a little, in order to give a 

 full history of these plantations ; a history which, I am sure, 

 every man of any feeling will read with a degree of interest 

 that he has rarely experienced. 



350. The scene of the plantings is a piece of ground of 

 about three acres, perhaps, close by the village of Botley, 

 in Hampshire, where I lived from 1805, till driven away to 

 America by Sidmouth and Company's Power of Imprisonment 

 Bill, in I8I7. On this piece of ground stood, and stands, 

 a dwelling-house, about fifty feet long, forty wide, three 

 clear stories high, with a high roof and high chimneys. 

 When I entered on the place, in 1805, there were some 

 Lombardy Poplars, and some few other things of the tree 

 and shrub kind. I grubbed all up. So that there stood this 

 great high house, upon a piece of bare ground. The high 

 road passes within about fifty yards of one end of the house. 

 There it stood in 1805, upon the bare and naked ground. 

 Now, at the end of eighteen years, the house is completely 

 buried in a icood, grown up out of trees not one of which, 

 when planted, was more than four feet high, and the far 

 greater part of them were not two feet high ; and, what is 

 more, almost the whole of the deciduous trees, raised from 

 the seed by me, in and after the year 1806. 



