268 
ON FOREST TREES. 
and independence, and the source of individual prosperity and riches. 
Observe a plantation which has not been cautiously or judiciously 
thinned and pruned, the trees which exist will be drawn up to poles 
or spires, with narrow and scanty tops, endeavouring to make their 
way upwards to such openings to the sky, as might permit the ac¬ 
cess of light and air. If entirely precluded by the branches which 
have closed over them, the weaker plants will be found strangely dis¬ 
torted by attempts to get out at a side of the wood ; and finally, if 
overpowered in their attempts by the obstacles opposed to them, they 
inevitably perish. As men throw aside their garments, influenced 
b y a close situation, trees planted in similar circumstances, exhibit 
a bark thin and beautifully green and succulent, entirely divested of 
that thick, coarse, protecting substance, which covers the sap-vessels 
in an exposed situation. 
Were trees, as well as other plants, judiciously adapted to their 
peculiar soils and situations, that extensive and sterile waste, which 
now impoverishes the country might he much diminished. Lands 
are barren, not so much from the nature of the soil, as from its not 
being properly managed. There are trees and plants well fitted to 
varieties of climates, perhaps so much so, as to bear transplantation 
from the plains of Lombardy to the skirts of London. Providence 
has undoubtedly been more kind in this respect, than we seem to 
have yet discovered. To select, appropriate, and naturalize some 
valuable Exotics to British soils and climate, the sister arts ofBotany 
and Chemistry, will lend to Agriculture their willing aid. While 
we have such extensive wastes capable of bearing firs and pines with¬ 
out number, why must we be indebted annually to foreign nations ? 
Why must we depend upon precarious treaties, for such great quan¬ 
tities of pitch, tar, rosin, and turpentine? Mr. Birbeck, in his 
notes on America, observes, “ one of the most striking features in 
the great Western Wilderness, is the magnificent growth of the 
vegetable kingdom.” In one place beyond the Ohio, he measured a 
fine walnut tree, about seven feet in diameter, or thirty-one in girth ; 
two sycamores of equal dimensions were decaying in its neighbour¬ 
hood. But the white oak, he says, is the glory of the Upland For¬ 
est, as they generally grow in thick groups, their stems are by no 
means so large as they would be if they stood single ; but they are 
lofty and straight in an extraordinary degree, sometimes eighty or 
ninety feet without a branch. Mr B. measured one which was six 
feet in diameter, at seventy feet from the ground. This is a gigan¬ 
tic growth almost unknown in our hemisphere. For miles together 
within view of the road were thousands of them, whose stems were 
