Thb Locust. 



which it ought not, by any means, you must take care, 

 when winter comes, to have but one shoot to each stem, 



373. " It is a pity to cut it down !" How often have I 

 heard this exclamation from persons, and persons of great 

 sense, too, when I have advised them to cut their young 

 trees down. Even gardeners and nurserymen are, in many 

 cases, with difficulty prevailed upon to refrain from acting 

 upon the notion of this exclamation ; which means, in 

 fact, that it is a pity to have straight and fast-growing trees. 

 A neighbour of mine, the late Mr. Clewer, of Botley, told 

 me, that he sowed, when he was a young man, three acorns, 

 in a row near to each other. I forget the number of years 

 that he suffered the plants to remain when he cut two of 

 them down close to the ground, leaving one of them un- 

 touched. At the end of two years afterwards, he cut down 

 again one of the two which he had cut down before, leaving 

 the other two untouched. At the end of twenty years, the 

 result was, what I cannot precisely recollect ; but, as far as 

 I can recollect, the tree which had been cut down twice, 

 was a great deal taller and bigger than the tree which had 

 been cut down only once ; and that even this was half as 

 tall again, and more than twice as big round at the bottom, 

 as the tree which had not been cut down at all. If this 

 be the case, with regard to trees that have never been trans- 

 planted, how necessary must it be to cut down transplanted 

 trees ! 



374. Great part of the foregoing paragraphs, relative to 

 the Locust, were written and published in 1823. In 1825, 

 I wished to produce proof of the quickness of growth, from 

 the plantations or plantation of some other persons or per- 

 son. An instance of the superiority of the Locust over 

 other trees in point of quickness of growth, I had seen in 



