In all cases where the cycle has run beyond twenty years, it will, at least, be well for the proprietor, or his manager, to sit down and calculate whether the stuff would not pay better if felled some years earlier. The inquiry can do no harm; and much good may possibly arise out of it. In the case last supposed, viz.: a wood with little or no oak, _and well stocked with underwood of a suitable kind_, there cannot be a doubt upon the subject; for if the stock—by which term I mean the shoots which have sprung up from the stools—has been properly treated, it will have arrived, in twenty years, at a size quite large enough for agricultural uses, and it can very seldom be allowed to stand longer without _serious injury to the stools_. A very little consideration will convince any one, who does not resist conviction, that such ought to be the state of a wood so circumstanced as to oak; but nevertheless the actual condition of most woods is widely different from this: instead of there being a full crop of underwood, where there is a deficiency of timber, or a full crop of timber, where there is little or no underwood, it too frequently happens that there is neither the one nor the other, even on land which is, as was remarked before, capable of yielding a handsome revenue! And here let it not be supposed that I am speaking of _extreme cases only_, or that there are but _few_ woods in this state: the cases are numerous: I have seen, and could point out many, but this I shall not do: I rather choose to leave these observations with “all whom they may concern,” to work conviction where they are seen to be _just_, quite indifferent as to the effect which they may produce on the minds of any who may oppose them.