Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
A piece of ordinary coppice ground, close adjoining this, and with no
timber in it, and upon just the same soil (if there had been such a
piece), would, at ten years' growth, be worth, at present prices, from
five to seven pounds the acre. This coppice, at ten years' growth, will
be worth twenty pounds the acre; and, at the next cutting, when the
stems will send out so many more shoots, it will be worth thirty pounds
the acre. I did not ask the question when I afterwards saw Mr. Leech,
but, I dare say, the ground was trenched before it was planted; but what
is that expense when compared with the great, the permanent profit of
such an undertaking? And, above all things, what a convenient species of
property does a man here create. Here are no tenants' rack, no anxiety
about crops and seasons; the rust and the mildew never come here; a man
knows what he has got, and he knows that nothing short of an earthquake
can take it from him, unless, indeed, by attempting to vie with the
stock-jobber in the expense of living, he enable the stock-jobber to
come and perform the office of the earthquake. Mr. Leech's father
planted, I think it was, forty acres of such coppice in the same manner;
and, at the same time, he _sowed the ground with acorns_. The acorns
have become oak trees, and have begun and made great progress in
diminishing the value of the ash, which have now to contend against the
shade and the roots of the oak. For present profit, and, indeed, for
permanent profit, it would be judicious to grub up the oak; but the
owner has determined otherwise. He cannot endure the idea of destroying
an oak wood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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