130 PARKS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS. 



if left standing in masses, years of time are necessary 

 to acclimate the exposed trees, and quicken them into 

 a renewed and healthy growth. What, then, must be 

 the condition of a single tree, or a dozen, or fifty trees, 

 even if left contiguous to each other, deprived of their 

 mutual support, the shade of the underwood beneath 

 them, and their accustomed m6isture at the root, with 

 the glaring heat of the sun drying up their trunks, and 

 the driving winds heaving at their tops like a huge 

 lever acting on their thin-spread roots, spread over a 

 surface of soft, porous mould? They must be blown 

 down, or die a lingering and miserable death, of neces- 

 sity, in nine cases out of ten, at least, where the ex- 

 periment is tried. Occasionally a tree, more firmly 

 rooted in the soil than usual, may survive. But what, 

 in case it do survive, is such a tree good for ? Its huge, 

 bare trunk, shooting up into the sky, and supporting a 

 meager tuft of half-feathered branches, is any thing but 

 an object of beauty; it scarce ever grows another 

 inch, and . remains only as a specimen of what the 

 forest among which it stood once may have been. It 

 is measurably so with smaller trees, few of which, 

 under like circumstances, survive at all ; or if they do, 

 scarcely ever arrive at a full and vigorous maturity. 

 "We speak feelingly, and from long experience. The 

 acres of forest which have been cleared under our 

 immediate supervision, may be counted almost by the 

 thousand ; and among the multitude of trees which we 

 caused to be left, in various kinds, and under all cir- 

 cumstances, not one in a hundred remain ; and were 

 we now to make a choice, at the end of twenty jears, 

 to produce the best effect in a forest plantation, whether 

 to go into an old, dense wood, and clear portions of it 



