644 ON FOREST TIMBER. 
plants could soon be got, wliich might safely be transplanted at such 
an age, as to make almost an immediate hedge. 
Hollies and Thorns might be mixed in hedges with a most excel- 
lent effect, every third or fourth plant being a holly ; for the first four 
or five years, the thorns will advance fastest, after which, the hollies 
will naturally gain ground, and at last totally extirpate the others; 
by planting both, you will soonest have an appearance, and after- 
wards, by an agi-eeable metamorphosis, have an entire holly hedge. 
Larches even upon stony ground, annually shoot between two 
and three feet. If the soil is dry, the height of the situation is of 
no consequence. The most superb palaces in Venice, and the forum 
of Augustus, were built of larch, as were simdry magnificent bridges 
by Tiberius. Posts of it driven into the ground become almost as 
hard as iron, and will bear an incredible weight. A larch of fifty- 
four years' growth in Derbyshire, measured in 1809, eightv-three 
feet and a half of timber ; the Duke of Athol was offered twenty 
pounds for a single larch of fifty years' growth. The thinnings used 
for upright paling, rails, and hurdles, with the bark on, are more du- 
i-able than oak-copse- wood of twenty -four years' growth. Four larches 
will gi'ow where only one oak or beech would occupy, and are tlie 
better for being crowded, whilst the two latter suffer materially from 
it. The pruning of larches makes them grow with great vigour, by 
repeated experiments, it appears that jDlauts which were pruned ad- 
vanced at the rate o(fovr years in six, before those which were not 
pruned ; this treatment should be attended to every year either win- 
ter or summer, after they have been planted out. 
The Norway Maple grows to a large timber tree ; its leaves are 
of a shining green colour, and are as large or lai'ger than the com- 
mon sycamore ; their edges are acutely and more beautifully indent- 
ed, they are not so liable to be eaten by insects in the summer, and 
in the autumn they die of a golden yellow colour, which causes a 
delightful effect at that season, when the different tints of the decay- 
ing vegetable world are displayed ; the flowers also are beautiful, 
they come out early in the spring, are of a fine yellow colour, and 
shew themselves to advantage before the leaves come out. 
Oaks, in Ampthill Park, are particularly celebrated for their great 
size and age ; several of them are supposed to be upwards of five hun- 
dred years old, and some persons do not hesitate to say, above a thou- 
sand; the growth of many of them is ten yards or considerably more. 
A survey of this park, by order of the Conventional Parliament in 
1653, pronounced two hundred and eighty-seven of these oaks hollow, 
and too much decaved for the use of the navv. The whole of these 
