NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

SECTION I.

NOTE I. Page 4.

WHOEVER is acquainted with the pursuits and information of the generality of landowners and country gentlemen, will be disposed to give full credit to the assertion here made in the text, and also to the following anecdote, which I shall mention for the amusement of the reader.

In the county of in which as large sums have been laid out in planting as in most others within the last half century, a gentleman, who is curious and intelligent about woods, and entertains the same opinion of the generality of our planters as I do, was, some few years since, remarking in a public company the almost universal want of science, or even of ordinary knowledge, that prevails on a topic so generally interesting. Not finding many persons agree with him in this sentiment, he offered a bet of five to one, that no gentleman present should, within three months, name three persons, landholders in the county, who had executed large plantations, and were possessed of from £500 to £5000 a-year and upwards, that were able to state with precision the different sorts of soils to which twelve of the principal forest trees planted in Britain were best adapted." The bet was on all hands

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allowed to be a very "sporting" one, and was immediately taken up. The taker of it next day set to work with his search. Being no planter himself, though a good agriculturist, he had no acquaintance with the subject in question: but he naturally enough imagined, that the species of knowledge, which was useless to him, must yet be valuable to others; and that therefore a planter could

no more be ignorant of the soils best suited to his trees, than a farmer could be of those adapted to his wheat or his barley crops. But at the end of the three months, he was reluctantly forced to acknowledge, that in the existing circumstances, the analogy was not a correct one; and three persons not being to be found of adequate information, he paid his money accordingly. During the course of the investigation, more than twenty planters aspired to the honours of the competition, all confident that they could easily gain him his bet. But when it came to the trial, the result was that one person only, in the county of was able to fulfil the prescribed conditions!

It has been remarked above, that so little are country gentlemen, or their gardeners, acquainted with either the planting or the management of woods, that it is truly "the blind leading the blind" in this important department of rural economy; and I cannot refrain from adding another anecdote, on the subject of soils, of which the facts came within my own knowledge.

A few months since, I was applied to by a friend to give him some advice respecting his trees. Wood, he said, grew so badly about his place, that, after the experience of forty years, he was almost discouraged from the cultivation of it. On visiting the spot, I perceived that his representation was but too well founded. As he felt a great partiality to Limes and Sycamores, he had transplanted those two sorts of trees all over his park, of eight and ten feet high, many years before; and that the work was executed in the best manner, he said, it was impossible to doubt, as it was done under the direction of his own gardener, who had extensive experience and knowledge of wood. But the gardener and himself both assured me, that the soil and climate were altogether unfavourable to wood," however either might suit husbandry or green crops. In proof of which they turned my attention to the trees, which indeed appeared stunted and unhealthy, with leaves of a yellowishgreen colour, and growing about an inch or little more in a season.

On examining the soil, the cause of my friend's want of success was at once apparent. It consisted of a rich but thin clay, naturally inclining to damp in the substratum, from the retention of moisture. My advice to him was very short; "Grub up your Limes and Sycamores, which you should never have planted; and which, unless by a miracle, could never grow to timber in such a soil. Replace them with Oak and Beech, of at least five-and-twenty feet high, and of two and three feet in girth, in order that they may be able to withstand the elements, and within a few years you will have thriving wood. But let Oak be the staple, whether of your plantations or your park-wood, with such a soil.” To get advice is one thing, to follow it is another. I know not

whether the gardener's opinion or mine prevailed with the good-natured owner; but the probability is that the place will remain in statu quo, and the badness of both soil and climate be deplored or reprobated for another generation.

NOTE II. Page 5.

So general is the feeling among the best-informed classes respecting the want of intelligence on the important subject of WOOD, that I believe a proposal for the establishment of an ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY in Scotland, if properly made, would be as ardently gone into as it would be universally approved. It is astonishing to think that, up to the present time, no such society should any where exist in the United Kingdoms. The importance and the uses of wood are so great and manifold, and its improvement of such paramount interest to the empire in general, and to individual districts in particular, that there are really few objects which are calculated to unite so many suffrages in their favour.

In respect to the beneficial results which the labours of such a society would produce, they are generally but very imperfectly hinted at in the text. Perhaps one of the most remarkable is the change that would take place in the character, education, and acquirements of our nurserymen, by far the most influential agents in the melioration of our future woods; because it is upon them that we must, depend for the nature of the materials. Should such a society be soon established, I should yet hope to see nurserymen come forth as they ought to do-able botanists, intelligent agriculturists and gardeners, vegetable physiologists of respectable information, and, in a word, men of general science.

Probably the truth is, that reformation, if it be begun in earnest, must begin elsewhere. Were the class of persons first mentioned in this enumeration in the text (namely, "well-informed landholders") by any means to rise up, the two others would follow as a necessary consequence. Let us hear one of the most candid and intelligent nurserymen in Scotland on the subject. On my observing to him lately, how much it was to be regretted that there was "no science" to be found among men of his profession, he replied nearly as follows :—

"Of what use or value, sir," said he, "would science be to us, while nothing of the kind is possessed by our employers? As nurserymen, seedsmen, or florists, we are mere dealers in the articles we sell, in the same way as the shopkeeper is in sugar, snuff, or haberdashery goods; only with this difference respecting us, that we raise or produce the article we sell, whereas the other has to buy or to sell it, after it has

been raised by others. Give gentlemen, who are the most partial to planting, but cheap plants, and they neither know nor care about the quality!

"No nurseryman, believe me, sir, (at least in this kingdom,) ever raised his reputation or extended his business by the superior quality of his trees, because that must have implied a superior price. BOUTCHER, the honestest and most judicious one we ever had, (a man more remarkable for the spirit of fair dealing than for any knowledge of the world,) made an attempt, about threescore years since, to improve Scottish arboriculture, and to convince the public of their injudicious anxiety for low-priced articles in our line. Had his merit been rewarded with that encouragement which it so eminently deserved, arboriculture would indeed have been improved under such an instructor. His excellent example would long ere now have rendered both science and information indispensable to our profession. But what happened? Boutcher was undervalued by the ignorance of his age. He was suffered to languish unsupported for years at Comely Garden, and died at last in obscurity and indigence. It would avail little in the present day to dwell on the ignorance and quackery of the men who supplanted him in the public favour. The work on 'the raising of forest-trees,' which he published by subscription, to relieve his wants, is a sufficient proof of his professional skill; and the detail of his practice is the severest satire on that of his successors. I conscientiously believe, that the millions of young trees at present raised near Edinburgh, if raised after Boutcher's method, would cover a greater surface than is now covered by the entire metropolis of the North!

"Since the time of the Millers and the Boutchers, the little science that was then dawning on our profession, whether in Scotland or elsewhere, has utterly disappeared from it. Planting and gardening, however, since that period, have come much into fashion in this country. The seed and nursery business has suprisingly increased. Instead of being confined, as formerly, to a scale the most limited and insignificant, it has become one of the most important professions in the metropolis and elsewhere, and fortunes, by consequence, have been rapidly accumulated by it.

"In these circumstances, sir, I conceive that we have been greatly enlightened, respecting the mysteries of the trade, by our brethren of the South. To furnish gardeners to the nobility and gentry, is now found to be the road to wealth; to sell cheap or dear, the only criterion of merit in the nurseryman. His study, therefore, never is, nor can be, science, or the quality of his plants, but solely and exclusively the art of raising the greatest possible number on the smallest space of ground,

and furnishing them to his customers at the lowest possible price. You may think that in this stricture I bear rather hard on our profession; but since you do me the honour to question me, I must tell you the truth."

All this, we must own, is extremely deplorable. It places in a strong point of view the benefits that would flow from a society for the improvement of arboriculture, were it judiciously constituted, and the necessity there is for at length cultivating the art independently and as a separate department. There is now sufficient wealth, and, what is of more importance, sufficient intelligence in the country to accomplish the object, and for once to enable us to lead the way in this instance in the advancement of the arts.

NOTE III. Page 6.

It was not till after the civil wars, that the arts of planting and gardening were greatly cultivated in England. The immortal Bacon, in the preceding age, was certainly the first who seemed to apprehend the true principles of beauty in the garden, and

"Taught a degenerate reign

What in Eliza's golden day was Taste."*

See his 46th Essay, in which he directs that a considerable portion of what he terms his "Princely Garden" should be "framed as much as may be to a natural wilderness."

The genius of Milton, likewise, at a later period, figured for his Eden a garden which could have no prototype but in his own taste and ardent imagination, but which might rather seem to have belonged to the richest garden and park scenery of an after age. The passage is curious, and to some it has appeared not less prophetic than beautiful; as the only models that were before our great poet's eyes, were the formal and rectilinear gardens which we derived from antiquity, and which still exist in most parts of Europe :