{181} III. BILLINGTON ON PLANTING. 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 be _not_ kept 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 the _bruit_ of 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.