The Oak. 



This was practised, sometimes, hundreds of years back; 

 but, if it had been of any solid utility; if it really had, in 

 the end, been attended with profit, the practice would have 

 become general ; instead of which, I never saw an instance 

 of it in all my life. I have seen small Oak stuff, in the 

 hedge-rows in Cornwall and Devonshire, thus skinned alive, 

 and there may be here and there a man that applies the 

 practice to large trees. But, at any rate, the practice is very 

 rare,'and very rare it could not be, if it were unequivocally 

 profitable. 



439. It is impossible that any reader, after being enabled 

 to make the comparison, should not decide on making Locust 

 plantations in preference to plantations of Oak. The 

 Locust will grow in any soil except in a mere swamp ; and, 

 by looking back at my account of the tedious progress of 

 the Oak, he will perceive that the Locust tree, at the end 

 of three or four years from the seed, would be higher and 

 bigger than the Oak tree at the end of twelve or fourteen 

 years from the seed ; and, when to this important consi- 

 deration, are added the superiority in the quality of the 

 Locust, and its great excellence in the forming of coppices 

 or underwood, it is impossible for any man to resist the 

 conviction tendered to his mind. 



440. Having now given instructions for the propagation 

 and management of the Oak generally; and believing that 

 there is no essential difference in the quality of the different 

 varieties of our English Oak, I next proceed to give an 

 account of the American Oaks, first observing, however, 

 that a sort of Oak very common in ornamental plantations 

 in England, called the Turkey Oak, is a very fast grower 

 and a very beautiful tree, but produces, as I am informed, 

 wood greatly inferior to that of our English Oak, The 



