Patrick Matthew

“ In the neighbourhood of London, this tree is attacked by an insect, which, running along the outside of the timber, within the bark, in a few seasons deprives the individual of life, the bark peeling off in large girdles, threatening to bereave this capital of the finest ornaments of its parks. ”

“ Sir Henry remarks, that “no man who knows any thing of wood, will put down the oak or the elm on light sand or gravel, as it is only on deep loam and clay that the oak, in particular, will really thrive and grow into timber.” No man who knows how much a suitable soil for any kind of plant is under regulation of the moistness or dryness of the atmosphere, and other circumstances, will refrain from smiling at Sir Henry’s very superficial acquaintance with his own subject, and at the manner he thus again brings forward mankind to testify in support of his own error. ”

“ The timber of our beech, while green, is by far the hardest of our large growing trees, and, in the American forest, the members of the beechen family match better than those of any other, with the perseverance of the ruthless Yankee; the roots retaining the hardness deeper in the earth than those of any other tree, and being so plaited and netted throughout the ground for a considerable space around the bulb, that it is next to impossible to trench or dig over the soil till they have decayed. ”

“ There is small room here for the discovery of the habitat and native character of plants, no chance of meeting with a rare species, every thing is modelled to art. The land-bailiff is an adept. With his dirty composts and top-dressings, he smothers the fog and the daisy; the scythe {229} sweeps down every idle weed, every wild flower which escapes his large-mouthed oxen. The live smooth bark of the lush fast-growing trees, affords no footing for the various and beautiful tribes of mosses and lichens. ”

“ Every carpenter in Scotland knows the extraordinary difference between the durability of Highland oak and oak usually imported from England, for the spokes of wheels. Every extensive timber-dealer is aware of the superior hardness of oak raised in Cumberland and Yorkshire, over that of Monmouthshire and Herefordshire; and such a dealer in selecting trees in the same woods, in any district, will always give the preference to oak of slow growth, and found in cold and clayey soils, and to ash on rocky cliffs, which he knows to be the soils and climates natural to both. ”

“ Does any one dread the necessity of foreign supply, from the foolish fear that it may be cut off by war? Keeping out of view the argument, that ere the British pride would suffer other domination on the waters, our numbers would be well thinned away, they know little of the influence of circumstance on man, who do not perceive that, in the event of free trade, and of the population of Britain increasing beyond what the country, under the best possible culture, could support, the very necessity of being mistress of the seas would make her so. ”

“ It is a fact well known to every intelligent farmer, that infield or croft land, that is land, which, having been earliest cultivated, was, of course, the best soil at first, and which has also been long highly manured at the cost of the outfield, and therefore containing much oleaginous and other matter, products of organization, produces grasses and other vegetables much more nutritive to cattle than the outfield, even though these vegetables be of the same species, and by reason of more careful culture of those of the outfield, also of the same size of plant. ”

“ As civilization progresses under the influence of navigation, and the earth exchanges her straggling hordes of savages for enlightened densely-peopled nations, every climate and country will be more set apart to its appropriate production, and the utility of the great conduit, the OCEAN, will more and more be developed, and become the grand theatre of contested dominion—superiority there being almost synonymous with Universal Empire—dry land only the footstool of the Mistress of the Seas1. ”

“ Whether a greater accumulation of vegetable mould or enriching of the soil, would take place under a system of rotation of crops, stirring of the ground, and manuring, or under Nature’s own system of management—whether, under forest, or under the rich leafy grasses depastured by cattle, is a question of the greatest intricacy, and only admits of local decision, being dependent upon climate, soil, and circumstance. ”

“ Let them, as citizens of the world, hold annual congress in some central place, and deliberate on the interests of man, which is their own, and throw the whole of their influence to support liberal and just governments, and to repress slavery, crime, bigotry—tyranny in all shapes. A Rothschild might earn an unstained fame, as great as yet has been attained by man, by organizing such a power, and presiding at its councils. ”

“ There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature which are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation. It is improbable that much of this diversification is owing to commixture of species nearly allied, all change by this appears very limited, and confined within the bounds of what is called Species; the progeny of the same parents, under great difference of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction. ”

“ Mr Cruickshank does not swerve from the common foolish system, of inculcating a determinate character of soil as generally necessary for each kind of tree. We are angry with the dulness of the writers on location of timber; they will not comprehend that a tree has two ends, by both of which it draws moisture, though from different elements, earth and air. The dullest clown is sensible he requires to drink more under an arid sun than under a drizzling rain. ”

“ It is, however, only in the present age that man has {388} begun to reap the fruits of his tedious education, and has proven how much “knowledge is power.” He has now acquired a dominion over the material world, and a consequent power of increase, so as to render it probable that the whole surface of the earth may soon be overrun by this engrossing anomaly, to the annihilation of every wonderful and beautiful variety of animated existence, which does not administer to his wants principally as laboratories of preparation to befit cruder elemental matter for assimilation by his organs. ”

“ It is a curious fact, that, under pasturage, fertility should increase in Britain and diminish in Australia. An uncropt deep cover of grass appears necessary to shelter the vegetable soil-matter during the arid heat, and even to protect the roots from being burned out, in the latter country. And the manure of cattle, instead of being covered by the luxuriant herbage before it is desiccated, and enriching the soil as in England, is, in New South Wales, under the powerful sun and arid air, quickly reduced to dust and dissipated. ”

“ May we, then, wonder that our plantations are occupied by a sickly short-lived puny race, incapable of supporting existence in situations where their own kind had formerly flourished—particularly evinced in the genus {108} Pinus, more particularly in the species Scots fir; so much inferior to those of Nature’s own rearing, where only the stronger, more hardy, soil-suited varieties can struggle forward to maturity and reproduction? ”

“ We have also seen, in the moss of Balgowan, Perthshire, fine thriving Scots firs, many of them two feet in diameter, growing in very moist, rich, mossy loam,—so moist, that although in a rather protected situation, a number of the trees, while young, had been laid on their sides by the wind, and were growing luxuriantly in the form of a quadrant of a circle, with as much as six and eight feet of the stem upon the level ground, affording a curve sufficient to reach from the keel of a vessel to the deck at midships. ”

“ As Nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time’s decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without reproducing—either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence. ”

“ Roots are most easily extricated from light soil, and with least fracture. They are large in proportion to stem in dry soil and climate, and when they are situated near the surface of the ground.—A healthy growing plant, of firm fibre, large root, and sturdy short stem of one leader and numerous feeders, is the great desideratum: a large root is the more desirable, as a considerable part of it is generally broken off in transplanting, rendering it disproportioned to the top, which, in consequence, either languishes, or receives deterring cropping. ”

“ We say that the rural economist should pay as much regard to the breed or particular variety of his forest trees, as he does to that of his live stock of horses, cows, and sheep. That nurserymen should attest the variety of their timber plants, sowing no seeds but those gathered from the largest, most healthy, and luxuriant growing trees, abstaining from the seed of the prematurely productive, and also from that of the very aged and over-mature; as they, from animal analogy, may be expected to give an infirm progeny, subject to premature decay. ”

“ We know not how others are affected, but there is no other place on earth where we have felt such oppression and weariness, as in the extensive smoothed park and lawns around the country seat. We sicken under the uniformity of the heavy-looking round-headed trees,—the dulness of the flat fat pasture, undecorated by a single weed,—the quiet stupid physiognomy of the cattle,—the officiousness of the sleek orderly menial. ”

“ The natural soil and climate of a tree, is often very far from being the soil and climate most suited to its growth, and is only the situation where it has greater power of occupancy, than any other plant whose germ is present. The pines do not cover the pine barrens of America, because they prefer such soil, or grow most luxuriant in such soil; they would thrive much better, that is, grow faster, in the natural allotment of the oak and the walnut, and also mature to a better wood in this deeper richer soil. ”

“ The fog-bee has lost its dwelling, the humble-bee its flowers, and they have flown away. Scarce an insect remains, except the swollen earth-worm, the obscene beetle, and the bloated toad, crawling among the rank grass. There is a heavy dankness in the air itself. ”

“ In the treatment of plants after they are removed from the seed-bed, the rent of the ground is the chief source of expense, as any common gardener will be able to manage them.”
“A general, and a very gross error, in purchasing plants, is to consider those as best which are the largest in proportion to their age. This absurd principle of selection makes those nurseries most frequented by customers which least deserve to be so, such, namely, as are situated in the richest soils, surrounded by the closest shelter, and stimulated by the greatest quantities of manure. ”

“ But the temperature is regulated so much by the position of seas and lakes, in combination with the prevailing currents and strength of currents of the air—by the configuration of the country,—moisture and cloudiness of the atmosphere and quantity of rain,—by the composition, arrangement, and colour of the soil,—by the lower vegetable cover, and even by the nature of the forest itself, whether deciduous or evergreen, that particular facts must be very carefully weighed to enable us to reach general conclusions. ”

“ But the tree will neither produce the same quantity of measurable timber in a considerable number of years, nor will it ultimately reach to nearly the same size, nor continue life nearly so long, as when left to itself. Man’s interference is useful in removing competitors, in giving it lateral room for extension, in training it skilfully to one leader and subordinate equality of feeders, should transplanting, early pruning up, or other cause, destroy the natural regular pyramidal disposition—not in pruning it up, thus reducing it to narrower compass, and destroying its balance to the locality. ”

“ The application of steam and gas to the important functions which they at present perform, was slowly and reluctantly adopted, after they had been opposed for many years by the prejudices of the public,—earlier or later this beautiful and rational system will be brought into general action, when it will do more to advance the picturesque beauty of the country in five years, than the slow methods hitherto adopted will in fifty. It is now found we possess the art of changing the face of nature like the scenes in a theatre, and that we can convert, almost instantaneously, a desert to an Eden. ”

“ Let us continue to extend our foreign intercourse and home cultivation—let the merchant legislate in affairs of trade—the landholder in country matters; each in that in which his judgment has been formed by experience, acting always on the principle that the general prosperity of the country is the interest {133} of every class—that, like the branch and the root, their prosperity is indissolubly combined. ”

“ It is impossible to describe the relief we feel when we emerge again into varied nature beyond the ring-fence,—we have the hill and the furze, the wild-violet and the thyme, and all the sweet diversity of our subalpine flora. We have the thatched, patched hut, the fine ragged children, the blooming cottage-girl,—we have the corn-field, where weeds of every dye, the beautiful centaurea and scabiosa, the elegant fumaria, the gaudy cock-rose, and the splendid chrysanthemum, are contending for existence with the cerealeæ. ”

“ In considering the characteristics of trees above mentioned, we should always bear in mind, that every production of nature is an end to itself, and that every part of it is, at once, end and mean. Of trees in open exposures we find, that their peculiar properties contribute, in a remarkable manner, to their health and prosperity. In the first place, their shortness and greater girth of stem, in contradistinction to others in the interior of woods, are obviously intended to give to the former greater strength to resist the winds, and a shorter lever to act upon the roots ”

“ Now, the leaves of a tree may be considered as bearing the same proportion to the trunk and branches, in respect to the nourishment which they require, as the straw of corn bears to the grain. But the manure which cultivated land receives, is, in general, little more than the straw which grows on it after it has served for food or litter to cattle. Ground in wood, then, actually receives, in the annual fall of the leaves, as much enrichment as the farmer bestows on his land under tillage. ”

“ Here every thing is necessary; nothing is redundant. In the words of a great philosopher, who was an accurate observer of nature, ‘Where the necessity is obviated, the remedy, by consequence, is withdrawn.’ If these facts and reasonings be correctly stated, the only rational theory of the removal of large trees consists, in prospectively maintaining the same harmony between the existing provisions of the tree, and the exigencies of its new situation, as had previously subsisted between its relative properties and the circumstances of its former site. ”

“ One would gladly leave {248} this old world, whose surface is disfigured all over by man’s patched drilled deformities, and pass on to a new one, where inviolated nature has produced and reared her own children after her own fashion, where every plant occupies its own place and blossoms in its own time. ”