356 
Pine Browse for Sheep-Tour in Bagland, No. ll. 
greens, and particularly appropriate for 
adorning the grounds around the family 
mansion. 
The best location for evergreens is a gra¬ 
velly, sandy, or rocky soil. Certain kinds 
also do very well in a surface of light loam, 
when the sub-soil is a hard tenacious clay 5 
others again flourish in swampy lands. 
PINE BROWSE FOR SHEEP. 
Pitch or white pine boughs are excellent 
for sheep to browse upon once or twice a 
week; they create an appetite and keep off 
disease. Cut down the saplings and drive 
the flocks to the grove, or draw them home 
to the sheep-fold. 
TOUR !N ENGLAND No. 11. 
Having a standing invitation from our ex¬ 
cellent friend H., to visit him whenever con¬ 
venient, after looking over the curiosities of 
the large manufacturing city of Sheffield, we 
concluded to test his hospitality, and at the 
same time take a lesson in English farming, 
of which he is a great amateur. We accor¬ 
dingly mounted the stage-coach once more, 
taking our favorite seat on the box along¬ 
side of the driver, and after a rapid set to of 
a couple of hours of “ tooling the tits,* as 
our Jehu technically termed it, over a pretty, 
undulating country, we passed a wide com¬ 
mon on which a tribe of gipsies had encamp¬ 
ed, and were almost immediately set down 
in the neat and quiet old town of Worksop. 
Here we ascertained that the residence of 
our friend, Mr. H., was some eight miles dis¬ 
tant ; but his brother near by, learning that 
we were in the village, kindly welcomed us 
home, while he sent him notice of our ar¬ 
rival. 
After cursorily looking over an exceeding¬ 
ly well cultivated farm, of a thousand acres, 
he ordered out saddle horses, and proposed 
a ride over the neighboring estate of the 
Duke of Portland, lying partly in Sherwood 
forest, famous for the feats of Friar Tuck, 
and the celebrated outlaw, Robin Hood, who 
in days of yore “ entertained an hundred tall 
men and good archers,” and according to 
the old ballad, was the prince and beau ideal 
of all captains of banditti. 
“ Robyn was a proude outlaw, 
Whiles he walked on y grounde; 
So curteyse an outlaw he was one. 
Was never none y founde.” 
And the historian says : u He suffered no wo¬ 
man to be oppressed, violated, or otherwise 
* A canLphrase with coachmen for driving. 
molested ; poor men’s goods he spared, abun- 
dantlie relieving them with that which, by 
theft he got from abbeys and the houses of 
rich Carles.” 
The estate of the Duke of Portland is a 
noble one, the plantations flourishing, and the 
covers for the game, of fern and gorse, quite 
thick. The pheasants were so tame that we 
might almost have knocked them down with 
our whips as we rode along; partridges also 
were abundant, and hares and rabbits without 
number. The park was full of fallow deer, 
lusty and fat, and amounting to 700 head at 
least.* Most of these are spotted like Ame¬ 
rican fawns, but a few are white, and others 
almost black. 
Here are some of the largest trees we saw 
in England. The Welbeck oak, 3 feet from 
the ground, measures about 30 feet in cir¬ 
cumference, and the Greendale oak, through 
which the Duke once drove his coach and 
four, w-e judged still larger. It is a very old 
tree, probably a thousand years, is hollow, 
and so decayed, that it has to be propped up 
on one side, and is preserved with great care 
and veneration. Would that we could say 
the same of more of our own larger and 
equally valuable trees in America; but there 
is a spirit of ruthless destruction of such 
things among us, especially in new settle¬ 
ments, which cannot be too greatly deplored. 
Yet w r e hope one day that an era of good 
taste will spring up in our land, which shall 
guard these aged monarchs of the wood, and 
preserve them with the same care and vene¬ 
ration that they now are in England, for they 
are our only antiquities. 
The Duke of Portland, with all his splen¬ 
dor, is an excellent farmer and matter-of-fact 
man, and being absent from home, the stew¬ 
ard was directed to let the sheep into the 
park with the deer, to pasture it; and here 
we saw beautiful flocks of South-downs in 
large numbers, feeding even upon the lawn 
close up to the front of the residence of their 
noble master. The hall is a fine old Abbey, 
and the housekeeper politely showed us over 
the state rooms, where we found beautiful 
paintings, costly furniture, and gems of art 
in great profusion. The private chapel at¬ 
tached to the Abbey, we believe is of Saxon 
origin, and is consequently of quite ancient 
architecture. 
The stables are superb: in America they 
would pass for a stone palace. The servants 
* This may seem a large number to our readers, but 
other parks which we subsequently visited, we were 
informed, contained from 1,500 to 2,000, all be^nging 
to one nobleman. 
