doubt, but in making them the author has been careful to lessen rather than exaggerate the profits: and if the plantation shall have been carried to the age of sixty or seventy years, and properly thinned, etc., the value will be double what it was at forty years." Thus, if 100 acres in seventy years will yield 80,000l. planted with oak, 6000 acres will yield about 5,000,000l.; while 6000 acres of the larch plantations of Athol in the same period are calculated to yield about 6,000,000l. There is sufficient agreement to lead us to suppose the calculations probably accurate, and what a splendid inducement to judicious planting do these calculations present!

The following facts, given in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," (vol. i., art. Agriculture), are also particularly interesting to the planter. Mr. Pavier, in the fourth volume of the Bath Papers, computes the value of fifty acres of oak timber in 100 years to be 12,1007., which is nearly 27. 10s. annually per acre; and if we consider that this is continually accumulating, without any of that expense or risk to which annual crops are subject, it is probable that timber-planting may be accounted one of the most profitable departments of husbandry. Evelyn calculates the profit of 1000 acres of oak land in 150 years at no less than 670,000l.

The following table shews the increase of trees from their first planting. It was taken from the Marquis of Lansdowne's plantation, begun in the year 1765, and the calculation made in 1786. It is about six acres in extent, the soil partly a swampy meadow upon a gravelly bottom. The measures were taken at five feet above the surface of the ground; the small trees having been occasionally drawn for posts and rails, as well as rafters for cottages, and when peeled of the bark will stand well for seven years.

From this table it appears that the planting of timber trees, when the return can be waited for twenty years, will undoubtedly repay the original cost of planting as well as the interest of the money laid out, which is better worth the attention of the proprietor of land, as the ground on which they grow may be supposed good for cattle also.

In Argyleshire, there are probably 40,000 acres of natural coppice wood which are cut periodically; commonly every nineteen or twenty years, and are understood to return about 17. an acre annually. Very extensive plantations have been formed by the Duke of Argyle, and other proprietors. About thirty years ago those of his Grace were reckoned to contain 2,000,000 trees, worth then 4s. each amounting to the enormous sum of 400,0007.

I knew a certain old military officer who during his early years was a captain in a militia regiment. His brother officers were a gay set of fellows, and were continually drawing on their private incomes, and often coming to him to borrow money; but he made it a rule never to spend more than his own pay, and as to money, he never had any to lend. He went down to his estate every spring and autumn, and planted as many acres of trees as his rental would allow him. His planting gave him a perpetual plea of poverty. At a certain age he retired on his half-pay. A large family was growing around him, but his woods were growing too. Many a time have I seen him, mounted on an old brood mare, with a sort of capacious game-bag across her loins, with his gun slung at his shoulder, his saws and pruning-knives strapped behind his saddle, going away into his woods: and keeping the calculations of Monteith, and of the larch plantations of Athol, in mind, I can now imagine the profound satisfaction which the old gentleman, through a long course of years, must have felt in the depths of his forest solitudes. He is still living, at an advanced age. His family is large, and has been expensive; but his woods were large too, and no doubt their thinnings have proved very grateful thinnings of his family charges.

We must now wind up, in a few words, what we have to say of the country life of the gentry, and these words must be on their gardens. In these, as in all those other sources of enjoyment that surround them, perfection seems to be reached. They live in the midst of scenes which, while they appear nature itself, are the result of art consummated only by ages of labour, research, science, travel, and the most remarkable discoveries. Nothing can be more delicious than the rural paradises which now surround our country houses. Walks, waters, lawns of velvet softness, trees casting broad shadows, or whispering in the stirrings of the breeze; seclusion and yet airiness; flowers from all regions, besides all the luxuries which the kitchen-garden, the orchard, conservatories, hothouses, and sunny walls pour upon our tables, are so blended and diffused

around our dwellings, that nothing on earth can be more delectable. It is impossible, without looking back through many ages of English life, to form any idea of the real advantages which we enjoy of this kind, of the immense stride we have made from the bare and rigid life of our ancestors. How many of the fruits or flowers, or culinary vegetables, which we possess in such excellence and perfection, did this country originally produce? Few, indeed, of our indigenous flowers are retained in our gardens, few of our vegetables besides the cabbage and the carrot; and what were the ancient British fruits besides the crab and the bullace? But we have only to look back to the feudal times to see the wide difference between our gardens and those then existing; for all that could be enjoyed of a garden must be compressed within the narrow boundary of the castle moat. Every thing without was subject to continual ravage and destruction; and though orchards were planted without, and suffered to take their chance, the ladies' little parterre occupied some sheltered nook of the court, or space between grim towers:

Now was there maide fast by the touris wall,
A garden faire, and in the corneris set
An herbere grew; with wandis long and small,
Railit about, and so with treeis set
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyfe was now, walkyng there for bye,

That myght within scarce any wight espye.

The Quair, by James I. of Scotland.

And the plot of culinary herbs occupied some sheltered spot within the moat; which when it is recollected how many other requisites of existence and defence were also compressed into the same space-soldiers, arms, and machines of war; sleeping and eating rooms; room for the stabling and fodder of horses, and often of cattle; space for daily exercise, martial or recreative; bowls, tilting or tennis,-when cooped up by their enemies, or made cautious by critical times, small indeed must have been the space or the leisure for gardens. Even in 1540, Leland in his Itinerary, tells us that our nobility still dwelt in castles, and there retained the usual defences of moats, and drawbridges. This was especially the case, the nearer they approached to the Scotch or Welsh borders; though in the vicinity of London villas and palaces

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had long sprung up. At Wressel Castle, near Howden, in Yorkshire, he says, "The gardens within the mote, and the orchardes without, were exceeding fair. And yn the orchardes were mounts, opere topiario, writhen about with degrees like the turnings in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payn." The career, indeed, by which our gardens have reached their present condition, has been, as I have said, the career of many ages, revolutions, and stupendous events. It is not only curious, but most interesting to trace all those circumstances which have contributed to raise horticulture to its present eminence, the great national events, the extension of discovery, of the arts, of general knowledge; the deep ponderings in cells and fields; the achievements of genius, of enterprise; the combinations of science, and the variations of taste which have brought it to what it is. The history of our gardening is, in fact, the history of Europe. The monks, whose religious character gave them an extraordinary security, as they were the first restorers of agriculture, so they were the first extenders and improvers of our gardens. Their long pilgrimages from one holy shrine to another, through France, Germany, and Italy, made them early acquainted with a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs, and with various fruits; and amongst the ruins. of abbeys we still find a tribe of plants that they thus naturalized. The crusades gave the next extension to horticultural knowledge; the growing commerce and wealth of Europe fostered it still farther; and the successive magnificent discoveries of the Indies, America, the isles of the Pacific and Australia, with all their new and splendid and invaluable productions, raised the desire for such things to the highest pitch; and made our gardens and greenhouses affluent beyond all imagination. What hosts of new and curious plants do they still send us every season! From every corner of the earth are they daily reaching us: the average value of the plants in Loddige's gardens is calculated at 200,000l. But what a blank would they now be but for the mighty spirit of commerce, the thirst of discovery, and of traversing distant regions, which animate such numbers of our countrymen, and send them out to extend our geography, geology, and natural history, or to prosecute astronomical and philosophical science under every portion of the heavens? And besides these causes, how much is yet to be