great as to treble and quadruple what the land was worth at the first time of planting. To all this large profit is to be added the comfort which the cattle experience in a well-sheltered pasture, where they have at once shade in summer, warmth in winter, and protection in the storm.

Yet great and important as are the advantages attending the Athol mode of planting, we would not willingly see it supersede the culture of the oak, the staple commodity of this island; nor de we believe it is permitted to do so in the country of the noble duke himself. But it is evident, that the greatest possible advantage is to be derived from combining the two different systems, and intermixing plantations to be kept entirely for wood, and consisting chiefly of oak and larch, with others which, consisting only of larch-trees, are to be occupied as pasture after the tenth or twelfth year. The beauty, as well as the productive qua lity, of the region to be planted, will be increased by blending the systems together, and uniting them at the same time with that of copse plantations, on which we are next about to make some remarks.

The mode of cultivating the sylva cædua, or copsewood destined to the axe, has been greatly improved by a discovery of our author, or, at least a practice which he has been the first to recom mend-the propagating the oak, namely, by layer ing from the double shoot of young saplings. We will here permit this practical and sound-heade forester to speak for himself:—

"The method of layering from the sprig of a plant is we

known to all nurserymen; but we must carry the matter a little farther when we go to the forest. The method of layering in forests, which is agreed on by all those who have tried it is of the very first and greatest advantage in filling up blanks in a natural or coppice wood: and with this we may commence. When the young shoots in a natural wood have finished their second year's growth, say in the month of November or December the second year (and here, by the way, it may be proper to observe, that, when layering is required, the stools of natural wood should not be thinned out the first year, as is directed in the section on rearing of natural or coppice woods), every shoot should be allowed to grow till the layering is performed, the second year's growth being finished as aforesaid. If the stools have been healthy, these will have made a push of from six to nine feet high. If there is a blank to fill up on every side of the stool, take four of the best shoots, and layer them down in different directions in the following manner; take the stem or shoot from the stool; give it a slash with a knife in the under side, very near the stool or root, to make it bend; often the shoot at this age will bend without using the knife; give it also a slash with your knife about one inch above the eye next the top of the shoot, Should there be but one small shoot near the top, and that chance to be next the ground, not to twist the leader or layer, give the shoot a twist round the body of the layer, and bring it upwards. Make a rut in the ground about six inches long, and of sufficient width to receive the body of the layer. Pin the layer firmly down in the slit below the surface of the earth. This may be easily and readily done with a small pin of wood, about six inches long, with a hook upon its upper end, to keep down the body of the layer; which pins can easily be got from the branches of trees in the wood. Having pinned it firmly down below the surface of the ground, cover over the layer with the turf from the rut; or a little fresh earth may be put in, and press it firmly down, holding up the end of the young shoot from the body of the layer, pressing the ground about the root of it the same as putting in a plant by pitting, &c., leaving also the top of the shoot or stem thus layered down out of the ground. Thus the layering is performed, and in one year, if the root or stool from which the layer is taken, be healthy, the top shoot, and the shoot to form the tree, say small shoot or eye from the top, will make a push of at least two, and I have even known them grow four feet in one season. Nor is there the smallest chance of their misgiving. The top shoot

the

having made a push again in two years of very possibly from eight to nine feet, it can be again layered down, and led out other eight or nine feet; thus in four years completely planting up and covering the ground on all sides from sixteen to eighteen feet (and supposing you have stools or roots on the ground at a distance of from thirty to forty feet), in five years, you can completely plant up the whole ground without the expense of a single plant. Nor is there the least risk of their misgiving in one single case, if properly done; and here also you have a plantation of plants, or we may now rather call them trees, of from four to fourteen feet high, which, by putting in plants, you could not have had for twelve years, besides the expense of much filling up."-MONTEATH, p. 47-50.

In another part of the same work he gives directions for forming a new copse-wood where no old plants exist, and his manner is well worthy the attention of the experimental planter. He proposes that only twenty-seven plants shall be placed in an English acre. Each of these being cut over yearly for five or six years, will, he reckons, produce, in the sixth, plants fit for layering; and having gone twice through that process, they will, in the course of eight years, fill up the ground with shoots at the distance of eight feet from each other, being the distance necessary in a copse-plantation. Screens and nurses of larch we would think highly conducive to the perfection of these operations.

Whether formed by planting or by layering, the cultivation of copse-wood is a matter of the highest importance, and seldom fails to be the most certain produce of a Highland gentleman's estate, where the woods are properly treated and regularly cut. The oak coppice will flourish on the very face of the most broken ground, however encumbered with rocks, and where it is impossible to conceive how the roots can obtain any nourish

ment, except from the rain which oozes among the clefts and crevices of the rock. And as to exposure, Mr Monteath informs us that the copse-woods in Scotland, and particularly in Argyleshire, on the very tops of hills from five hundred to one thousand feet above the level of the sea, are equally healthy, produce equally good bark, and are nearly equally productive with those in the vales, although they are exposed to every wind that blows.

In order to give some idea of the profit attending these copse-woods, the following calculation was made for a nobleman who had lately succeeded to a very extensive tract of mountainous country. It was supposed that, being willing regularly to dedicate a sum, which the amount of his income made a moderate one, to this species of improvement, there should be selected each year in the most convenient places, and those where shelter was most likely to benefit the pasture, a hundred acres of waste and unprofitable ground, to be planted or layered as copse-wood. The amount of rent thus sacrificed, for reasons already given, would be very trifling indeed. The expense of planting and enclosing, presuming it to be carried on with liberality and even profusion, could not, in any reasonable view, exceed four hundred pounds. To meet the labour and expense of revision, the proprietor would have the value of thinnings, which, supposing the nurses to be larch, would be found much more than adequate to the purpose of reimbursing them. A similar space of

land was supposed to be regularly planted on every year for twenty years, or two or three more, as the general progress of the plantations might render necessary. The hundred acres first planted would then be ready for a fall, the produce of which would afford at least four tons of bark to an acre, and taking the price at ten pounds a-ton, which is cer tainly not extravagant, would bring in four thou sand pounds in return for four hundred expended twenty years before. The subsequent copses being cut in regular rotation, in the order in which they were planted, the noble proprietor would be found to have added four thousand pounds yearly to his estate, in the space of two or three and twenty years; and it is unnecessary to add that the private gentleman who can but afford to plant the tenth part of the extent, must, if the site of his wood is well chosen, derive proportional advantage. It cannot be denied, however, that the larger the size of the plantations, the more likely they are to be thriving and productive.

The copse-wood cannot pretend to the dignity of the forest, yet it possesses many advantages. The standing wood must be one day felled, and then it is centuries ere it can arise again in its pris tine majesty; nay, as fellers are seldom planters, it too often happens that, once fallen, the mature forest falls for ever; the proprietor feels a sort of false shame in supplying with pigmy shrubs the giants which he has destroyed, and the term when the damage can be repaired is so far beyond the ken of man, that the attempt is relinquished in de