T«E Sassafras. 



or three feet long the first year. If you wish to have the 

 tree lofty, you must keep the lower side-shoots pruned off, 

 in the manner directed for other deciduous trees, always 

 cutting with a sharp knife and close to the trunk. If you 

 plant in hedge-rows, or in shrubheries, and do not want the 

 tree to attain any considerable height, the best way would 

 be to cut off, within a foot or a foot and a half of the 

 ground, this will bring out two or three stout shoots, these 

 will become limbs in time, and you will have a low tree 

 witli a wide spreading head. 



502. When once the tree- gets to be as big as your arm 

 at the butt, it will begin to throw out suckers, especially 

 if the lateral roots should be cut or torn by the plough or 

 spade. These suckers, if they come up in the hedge-rows, 

 may stand till they throw out suckers again ; and they will 

 soon spread along a hedge-row of several hundred yards in 

 length, yielding an immense quantity of that salubrious 

 bark, the nature of wiiich is so precious as to cause it to 

 be imported, and to be purchased and consumed, though 

 loaded with a heavy duty. 



503. Now, our hedge-rows are generally filled witli all 

 sorts of rubbish; Maple, Elm Stumps, Scrubby Oak 

 Stumps, Elder Stumps, Brambles, Knee-holm, and vari- 

 ous other good-for-nothing things, which are, at the same 

 time, as unsightly as they are worthless. Any where near 

 a good house, the Sassafras would make beautiful Hedge 

 Rows. In clumps, in independent trees, upon lawns, in 

 shrubberies, they would be singularly ornamental; covered 

 with blossoms very early in the spring (not later than the 

 20th March); loaded with fine bright leaves all the sum- 

 mer, which leaves die in the fall of the brightest yellow 

 colour ; this tree, uniting all these qualities, would, if it 



