It is certainly the case, that luxuriant growth increases the size of the sap-vessels and cells, but with this increase of size, there is often a proportional increase of thickness of the sides of these vessels and cells, and a greater than proportional filling up of dense matter, as the alburnum is better ripened in autumn, or as the mature wood, especially of hard wood in dry situations, ripens more slowly in the course of years. There is also in many kinds more of close tissue and cellular part, in proportion to large sap-vessels, when the tree is growing vigorously than when it is stunted. (See the facts in our notice of Withers, p. 199.) _Thence culture does not necessarily render the timber softer, less solid, and more liable to suffer by the action of the elements._ We are really angry with those smooth-tongued rogues who “fool us to the top of our bent.” _Every artificer_ who has worked slow grown ash of considerable age, that is, when most of the timber has been deposited after the tree has been seeding strongly, _assures us_ that the timber is very inferior, in all respects, to that of quicker growth. {283} We consider the forester who has observed that thorns or furze trained in hedges are much easier cut from softness of timber than when growing in detached bushes, a much better observer than ourselves; and we would inquire whether he were certain that the greater efficiency of his blows was not owing to their being better directed, from the conveniency of access, owing to the training up, than from the timber being softer? The example of the raspberry we consider very irrelevant, it being only a semi-herbaceous plant of biennial stem.