POLLARDING TREES. 
268 
for the farmer.* It is by no means an uncommon thing, 
to observe every ash tree in a hedge reduced to stumps 
by successive pollardings. Many a landlord would 
shudder at the thought of breaking up an old productive 
sward, and not regard the topping of an ash ; whereas 
this latter act is infinitely more injurious, ultimately, 
than the former. The land may, and will probably, re- 
cover, but the tree is lost for ever, as to any profitable 
purposes for the owner. The farmer might perhaps tell 
the agent when he remonstrated, that he must have 
fire-wood, and hedging stuff; but the wants of the 
former have decreased by the facility of obtaining other 
fuel, and neither is to be supplied by the landlord at 
such a ruinous subversion of present and future benefit. 
I am not so silly as to enlarge upon the beauty of what 
has been called “picturesque farming;” but when we 
cast our eyes over the country, and see such rows of 
dark, club-headed posts, we cannot but remark upon 
the unsightly character they present, and consider it 
neither laudable to deform our beautiful country by the 
connivance, nor proper attention to individual profit to 
allow the continuation of it. The ash, after this mutila- 
tion, in a few years become flattened at the summit, 
moisture lodges in it, and decay commences, the central 
parts gradually mouldering away, though for many years 
the sap wood will throw out vigorous shoots for the 
hatchet. The goat-moth now too commences its mordi- 
cations, and the end is not distant. But the wood of 
the ash appears in every stage subject to injury ; when 
in a dry state the weevils mine holes through it ; when 
covered by its bark, it gives harbor to an infinite variety 
of insects, which are the appointed agents for the re- 
moval of the timber : the ashen bar of a stile, or a post, we 
may generally observe to be regularly scored by rude 
* The ash, generally speaking, will arrive at a very serviceable 
age, in sixty years, producing at a low rate twenty-eight feet of 
timber, which, at 2s. 3 d. the foot, its present value, would produce 
a sum equivalent to 31 3s., a silent unheeded profit of above a shil- 
ling a year. A hundred such might have been felled annually from 
many farms had they not been topped, which, in consequence of 
this practice have produced nothing. 
