III.BILLINGTONONPLANTING.We have perused Billington’s account of the management of the Royal Forests with much profit; it affords us an excellent series of experiments, shewing how much conduct and integrity may exist in Government establishments, even although the strictest watch benotkept over their motions by the nation itself. Words are awanting to express our admiration of every thing connected with the management of our misnamed Royal Wastes. We scarcely could have hoped to find such pervading judgment and skill of calling, as have been displayed by the Commissioners, and Surveyors General and Particular; but it is true, the noble salaries attached to these situations must induce men of the very first ability and knowledge of the subject, to accept of the office.
We have perused Billington’s account of the management of the Royal Forests with much profit; it affords us an excellent series of experiments, shewing how much conduct and integrity may exist in Government establishments, even although the strictest watch benotkept over their motions by the nation itself. Words are awanting to express our admiration of every thing connected with the management of our misnamed Royal Wastes. We scarcely could have hoped to find such pervading judgment and skill of calling, as have been displayed by the Commissioners, and Surveyors General and Particular; but it is true, the noble salaries attached to these situations must induce men of the very first ability and knowledge of the subject, to accept of the office.
Our author, Mr Billington, proceeds with great naiveté to relate how they sowed and resowed acorns—how they planted and replanted trees, persevering even to the fifth time, sometimes covering the roots, and sometimes not, “but all would not avail,” nothing would do; the seeds did not vegetate, and the{182}plants refused to grow, excepting in some rare spots, and a few general stragglers. Then how the natural richness of the soil threw up such a flush of vegetation—of grass, and herbs, and shrubs, that most of these plants were buried under this luxuriance; and how the mice and the emmets, and other wayfarers, hearing, by thebruitof fame, of the wise men who had the governing of Dean, assembled from the uttermost ends of the island, expecting a millennium in the forest, and ate up almost every plant which had survived the smothering. Now, this is well; we rejoice over the natural justice of the native and legitimate inhabitants of the Royal Domain, the weeds mastering the invaders the plants, who, year after year, to the amount of many millions, made hostile entrance into the forest. We only deplore the cruel doom of the mice, on whose heads a price was laid, and of the emmets, who, acting as allies of the native powers, merited a better fate than indiscriminate slaughter.
May we hope that our Government will no longer persist in unprofitable endeavours to turn cultivator, or to raise its own supply? We laugh at the Pasha of Egypt becoming cotton-planter and merchant himself, in a country where the exertions of a man enlightened beyond his subjects, who has influence{183}to introduce intelligent cultivators, possessing the knowledge of more favoured nations, may be necessary to teach and stimulate the ignorant Copt to raise a new production: And here, where discovery in every branch of knowledge almost exceeds the progressive—here, where so many public and governmentfixturesstand out, as if left on purpose to indicate the recent march of mind, contrasting so strongly with private and individual attainment in science and art,—with every thing the reverse of what affects the Egyptian’s conduct; or, at least, with no excuse beyond affording a cover for a wasteful expenditure of the public money;—will our Government continue the system, heedless of reason or ridicule? or will they not at once end these practices, and immediately commence sales of every acre of ground to which the Crown has claim, excepting what is necessary for the use of royalty, abolishing Woods and Forest Generals, Rangers—every one who has taken rank under Jacques’ Greek, or the devil’s own invocation, and pay off a part of the debt which is crushing the energies of the first of nations?
Yet it is not of individuals that we complain; perhaps nobody could have had a strongerdesireto do his duty, than the late Surveyor-General. It is the system that is naught; where, to the lowest{184}labourer, none have individual interest in the success of their work; and where the efforts of the really honest, intelligent, and industrious are, by directions and trammels, rendered unavailing; or even through misrepresentation bythoseof a contrary character, (as would seem in the case of Mr Billington), are the cause of dismissal.
We can only predicate of the future from the past. In spite of all our Parliamentary acts respecting these forests, and the clamour that for ages has been made about them, they, with little exception, have existed only as cover for sinecure expenditure, or for display of tyro ignorance and incapacity, and subject for pillage, thieving, and frauds of every description40; (videParliamentary Reports). We could easily—by a very simple incantation, requiring a rod neither tipped with silver nor with gold, but merely a plain cane or sword—bring forth a sufficient quantity of large growing oaks to meet any emergency. Our charm would be to give the title of Prince to the Duke who should possess, and have at the command of Government at a fair price, a certain{185}number of oaks above a certain size, and a step of elevation to every titled person, and the title of Baronet to every private gentleman, who should possess a given number, diminishing the number requisite to give a step as the title became lower. We should conceive this law would not render nobility of less estimation. Perhaps the clause might be added, that one tree raised on waste ground should count two.
As a treatise on the rearing, or rather prevention of the rearing, of young planting, Mr Billington’s small volume possesses some real merit; and simplicity and useful and sagacious remark are so blended together, as to afford to the reader at once amusement and information. We are something at a loss to account for this incongruity. Has the seclusion of a forest life given a cast of thenaturelto his mental product; or has Jaques of Arden really been in Dean with his celebrated invocation?
Mr Billington’s directions on pruning and training are generally good; but he distances common sense when on his hobby of shortening of side branches, in recommending to extend this practice to pines. His breeding as a gardener, and consequent taste for espalier and wall-training, where every shoot must be under especial direction, seem to have{186}unfitted his mind to expand to the comprehension of nature’s own process of action, and disqualified him from walking hand in hand with her. We also consider that no good, but rather evil, would result from continued cutting in, and lopping off the points of the branches of all kinds of trees, excepting when the plants were stunted, or much covered with flower-buds. Even a very slight clipping greatly retards the growth of hedges; and the labour and attention requisite would be very great: besides, the poor things, the trees, trimmed to the Billingtonian standard, would, amongst the unrestrained beauties of the forest, be ready to sink into the earth for very shame of theirformal deformity. He errs, too, in recommending not to plant sycamore plane, as being of little value while young. We have sold young planes, six or seven inches in diameter, at a higher price per foot than large oak. They will generally find a good market wherever machinery abounds, and will probably become every year in greater request.
Mr Billington is particularly solicitous to render his instructions as plain as possible, in describing the mode of pruning young oaks in formation of knee timber, as he confesses to bring it down to the comprehension of gentlemen; but he is not very happy in his figures of oak trees trained to this use, from{187}want of acquaintance with the cutting out of naval crooks. He remarks that “larches are more liable to die in wet ground by their roots being soaked in water during winter, than oak and some other kinds;” but ground that is at all pervious to water, ought not to be planted till it be drained in such a manner that water will soon disappear from shallow holes; and where, from the plastic closeness of the clay, draining is not quite effectual, the planting should take place as late in the spring as the breaking of the buds will permit; and principally by slitting, which, by not breaking the natural coherence or turfiness of the soil, affords less opening for water to stagnate around the roots, and does not occasion the soil to sink down into the mortary consistence consequent to pitting; there is also less destruction of the vegetables growing in the soil, hence less putrescent matter to taint the water that may stagnate round the roots; pure water, or water in motion, not being detrimental to the roots for a considerable time: also, when the plants are put in late in spring, there is seldom long stagnation of water that season, and by next winter the ground has become so firmed around the roots as to allow very little space for water, and has also acquired a certain granular arrangement akin to polarization or crystallization, which{188}allows the water gradually to percolate; it is also bored by the earth-worm, and other insects, and the plant itself, after the roots have struck anew and the fractures healed, possesses a vitality which better enables it to withstand the exclusion of air from the roots, and chilling by the water the ensuing winter, and either prevents absorption of the stagnant fluid, or counteracts its putrid tendency. Planting succeeds best in soil of this description when the ground has been under grass for some period, at least the new planted tree, in this case, is less liable to the root-rot; and trenching or digging previous to planting is of more utility, as the turfiness prevents the clay from sinking down into impervious mortar, and allows the water to percolate to the drains.
Mr Billington is very earnest in recommending to drain well at first, and to keep the drains (open drains) in repair; he also directs, where the ground is very impervious and wet, to take large square sods, about 18 inches square and 9 inches thick, from the drains while digging in early winter, and place one of these, the grassy side undermost, in the site which each plant is to occupy. In the spring, by the time of planting, the sod has become firmly fixed, and the two swards rotting afford an excellent nourishment to the plant, which is inserted in the{189}centre of the sod, with the roots as deep as the original surface; the drains, being necessarily numerous, afford turf sufficient for all the plants. This is good. He also gives sensible directions to beat down, hoe, or cut away all weeds, shrubs, and grass, from the young plants, and to remove all rough herbage and thickets of shrubs, that form harbour for the short-tailed mouse, which is exceedingly destructive, in the case both of planting and sowing; in the former, by nibbling the bark from the stem, and biting off the twigs of the young trees, (from which our author may have taken the hint of cutting in, as mankind took that of pruning from the browsing of the ass), and gnawing their roots immediately below the surface of the ground; and in the latter, by devouring the seed in the ground, and cutting down the seedling annual shoot. He also instructs to keep the tree to one leader, shortening all straggling large branches; but his assertion, that plants which had the tops of the straggling branches pinched off in the first part of summer, grew much larger in consequence, looks rather absurd; although we have known a part of a hedge, clipped a week or two after the growth had commenced in spring, grow more luxuriantly than the part which had been pruned in the same manner before the growth had{190}commenced. This was owing to the check by the late clipping, throwing the period of growth into warm moist July; what was earlier clipped performed its growth in dry June, and was considerably injured by the manna blight which the latter escaped41. The same cause operates to induce late sown grain and wheat, which has been thrown late by much injury of spring frost, to acquire a larger, more luxuriant bulk, than that of earlier growth.
It would appear to us that Mr Billington, from ignorance of the value of larch, and of the soil proper for maturing it, has done more injury to the parts of the royal forests where a growth of timber was obtained, by cutting out the thriving larch, than will be compensated by his pruning and training of the sickly stunted oak which remained, as described by him, scarcely visible, when the larches were of size for country use; but we forget; no blame can attach to him—his orders were, that every thing should give place to oak.{191}
In parting with our author, it is but just to state, that we consider many may profit by a perusal of his pages: that notwithstanding the simplicity to which we have alluded, there is often something sterling in his remarks and reflections, the result of much experience, resembling the original freshness of our writers before writing became so much of a trade. In some places, indeed, his narrative is so simply, naturally descriptive, and speaks so eloquently, of ignorance of climate, season, soil, circumstance—of all the unknown dangers and difficulties incident totheirnew employment—and of the wonderful contrivances and inventions hit upon to remedy them—that, when perusing it, we could scarcely persuade ourselves we were not engaged with Robinson Crusoe.