the natural boundaries, carry them down to the glens on one side, sweep them around the foot of the hills on another, conduct them up the ravines on a third, giving them, as much as possible, the character of a natural wood, which can only be attained by keeping their boundaries out of sight, and suggesting to the imagination that idea of extent which always arises when the limits of a wood are not visible. It is true that in this manner some acres of good ground may be lost to the flocks, but the advantages to the woodland are a complete compensation. It is, of course, in sheltered places that the wood first begins to grow, and the young trees, arising freely in such more fertile spots on the verge of the plantation, extend protection to the general mass which occupies the poorer ground. These less-favoured plants linger long while left to their own unassisted operations: annoyed at the same time by want of nourishment, and the severity of the blast, they remain, indeed, alive, but make little or no progress; but when they experience shelter from the vicinity of those which occupy a better soil, they seem to profit by their example, and speedily arise under their wings.

The improver ought to be governed by the natural features of the ground in choosing the shape of his plantations, as well as in selecting the species of land to be planted. A surface of ground, undulating into eminences and hollows, forms to a person who delights in such a task, perhaps the most agreeable subject of consideration on which the mind of the improver can be engaged. He must

take care, in this case, to avoid the fatal yet frequent error of adopting the boundaries of his plantations from the surveyor's plan of the estate, not from the ground itself. He must recollect that the former is a flat surface, conveying, after the draughtsman has done his best, but a very imperfect idea of the actual face of the country, and can, therefore, guide him but imperfectly in selecting the ground proper for his purpose.

Having, therefore, made himself personally acquainted with the localities of the estate, he will find no difficulty in adopting a general principle for lining out his worst land. To plant the eminences, and thereby enclose the hollows for cultivation, is what all parties will agree upon; the mere farmer, because, in the general case, the rule will assign to cultivation the best ground, and to woodland that which is most sterile; and also, because a wood placed on an eminence affords, of course, a more complete protection to the neighbouring fields than if it stood upon the same level with them. The forester will give his ready consent, because wood no where luxuriates so freely as on the slope of a hill. The man of taste will be equally desirous that the boundaries of his plantation should follow the lines designed by nature, which are always easy and undulating, or bold, prominent, and elevated, but never either stiff or formal. In this manner, the future woods will advance and recede from the eye, according to and along with the sweep of the hills and banks which support them, thus occupying precisely the place in the landscape where nature's

own hand would have planted them. The projector will rejoice the more in this allocation, that in many instances it will enable him to conceal the boundaries of his plantations, an object which, in point of taste, is almost always desirable. In short, the only persons who will suffer by the adoption of this system will be the admirers of mathematical regularity, who deem it essential that the mattock and spade be under the peremptory dominion of the scale and compass; who demand that all enclosures shall be of the same shape and of the same extent; who delight in straight lines and in sharp angles, and desire that their woods and fields be laid out with the same exact correspondence to each other as when they were first delineated upon paper. It is to be conjectured, that when the inefficiency of this principle and its effects are pointed out, few would wish to resort to it, unless it were a humorist like Uncle Toby, or a martinet like Lord Stair, who planted trees after the fashion of battalions formed into line and column, that they might assist them in their descriptions of the battles of Wynendale and Dettingen. It may, how ever, be a consolation to the admirers of strict uniformity and regularity, if any such there still be, to be assured that their object is, in fact, unattainable; it is as impossible to draw straight lines of wood, that is, lines which shall produce the appearance of mathematical regularity, along the uneven surface of a varied country, as it would be to draw a correct diagram upon a crumpled sheet of paper, or lay a carpet down smoothly on a floor littered

with books. The attempt to plant upon such a system will not, therefore, present the regular form and plan expected, but, on the contrary, a number of broken lines, interrupted circles, and salient angles, as much at variance with Euclid as with nature.

We are happy to say, that this artificial mode of planting, the purpose of which seems to be a sort of inscribing on every plantation that it was the work of man, not of nature, is now going fast out of fashion, both with proprietors and farmers. A gentleman of our acquaintance had, some years ago, the purpose of planting a considerable part of a farm of about one hundred and twenty acres, which lay near his residence. It rented at about twenty shillings per acre. The proprietor, rejecting a plan which was offered to him, for laying off the ground into fields resembling parallelograms, divided like a chess-board by thin stripes of plantation, went to work in the way we have mentioned above, scooping out the lowest part of the land for enclosures, and planting the wood round it in masses, which were enlarged or contracted, as the natural lying of the ground seemed to dictate, and producing a series of agreeable effects to the eye, varying in every point of view, and affording new details of the landscape, as the plantations became blended together, or receded from each other. About five or six years after this transformation had been effected, the landlord met his former tenant, a judicious cool-headed countryman, upon the ground, and naturally said to him, " I suppose, Mr R., you

will say I have ruined your farm by laying half of it into woodland ?”- "I should have expected it, sir," answered Mr R., "if you had told me beforehand what you were about to do; but I am now of a very different opinion; and as I am looking for land at present, if you incline to take, for the remaining sixty acres, the same rent which I formerly gave for a hundred and twenty, I will give you an offer to that amount I consider the benefit of the enclosing, and the complete shelter afforded to the fields, as an advantage which fairly counterbalances the loss of one half of the land." The proprietor then showed Mr R. the plan which had been suggested to him, of subdividing the whole farm by straight rectilinear stripes, occupying altogether about five-and-twenty or thirty acres. The intelligent and unprejudiced agriculturist owned that, à priori, he would have preferred a system which left so much more land for the occupation of the plough, but as frankly owned that the trees could neither have made half the progress, or have afforded half the shelter, which had actually been the case under the present plan, and that he was now convinced that the proprietor had chosen the better part.

Another proof of the same important fact occurs, upon a hill which we, at this moment, see from the windows of the apartment in which we are now writing. It is of considerable height, and the proprietor, about forty years ago or more, attempted to raise a plantation on the very crest or summit of the eminence, retaining the rest of the hill for the