14 
Arboriculture, 
‘Svherein you shall have for one lively thriving tree, four, nay tw'enty- 
four evil-thriving, rotten, and dying trees, ever whiles they live; and 
instead of trees, thousands of bushes and shrubs. What rottenness ! 
what hollo^vness! what dead arms! withered tops! cmtailed trunks! 
what loads of moss, drooping boughs, and dying branches, shall you 
see every where! ” And all this he attributes to the ignorance of the 
^^Arborists,” of his day. The father of British foresting, the truly 
respectable Evelyn, proceeds in a similar strain, to deprecate the bar¬ 
barous ignorance of the woodmen of his time.—“It is a pity,’’ says he, 
“ to see our fairest trees defaced and mangled by unskilful woodmen, 
who hack and chop off every-thing that comes in their way; by which 
our trees ai'e made ffill of knots, stubs, boils, cankers, and deformed 
bumps, to their utter destruction.*’* Arthur Young, compares the 
mutilated trees in many parts of England, to mop-poles; and asserts, 
as a result of the neglect, so general at that time, that fifty forests 
w^ere eradicating, for one which was being formed. And Lord Mel¬ 
ville, in his letter to Mr Percival, predicts with good reason,, that if 
this culpable apathy to the interests of the nation shall continue, Eng¬ 
land will, “ ere long experience a fatal want of an article, on which 
her existence as a nation, in no mean degree depends.” 
To what other cause then, but an unaccountable want of infonnation 
as to the advantages to be derived from wooded lands properly mana¬ 
ged, can we account for the necessity which exists, for importing timber 
into a country, where, for centuries, millions of acres of land, capable 
of producing valuable timber, have been permitted to remain totally 
unproductive.—When we traverse the wilds of Conemarra, or the 
Grampians, we are incessantly struck with the eligibility of vast tracts 
for the production of timber, but that they should continue in a state 
of comparative waste, does not excite surprise. In Scotland, we have 
seen that much has been already effected; and the day has not yet 
arrived, when the resources of Ireland shall be called into action; but 
that the hills of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, in the north, or the level 
plains of Hampshire, in the south, of England, should be suffered to 
produce heath instead of oak and deal; and that too, in a country 
where unlimited capital exists, and industry only requires permission 
to exert itself, must be ranked amongst the most extraordinary ano¬ 
malies connected with the history of the country. 
Foresting, as a distinct profession, so far at least as I have been able 
to observe, can scarcely be said to exist in Ireland.—Much land has 
doubtless been planted in that country within the last 40 years, indeed 
more has been done to excite a spirit for this improvement there, than 
in either England or Scotland; the Royal Dublin Society having 
within a few' years before the commencement of the present century, 
* Hunter’s Evelyn’s Sylva, page 470. 
