Country life -- England; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
What we have just said of the pleasures and benefit of scientific
farming, may be said also of planting; it is but another interesting
mode of employing time by landed proprietors, at once for recreation and
the improvement of their estates. What, indeed, can be more delightful
than planning future woods, where, perhaps, now sterile heather, or
naked declivities present themselves; clothing, warming, diversifying in
imagination your vicinity; then turning your visions into realities, and
watching the growth of your forests? Since John Evelyn wrote his
eloquent Sylva, and displayed the deplorable condition of our woodlands,
and since Dr. Johnson penned his sarcastic Tour to the Hebrides, both
England and Scotland have done much to repair the ravages made in the
course of ages in our woods. A strong spirit on the subject has grown up
in the minds of our landed gentry, and vast numbers of trees of all
kinds suitable to our climate have been planted in different parts of
the island. The Commissioners of Woods and Forests have made extensive
plantations of oak in the New Forest, and other places. In the
neighbourhood of all gentlemen’s houses we see evidences of liberal
planting: and the rich effect of these young woods is well calculated to
strengthen the love of planting. In this part of Surrey, wood, indeed,
seems the great growth of the country. Look over the landscape from
Richmond Hill, from Claremont, from St. George’s or St. Anne’s Hill, and
it is one wide sea of wood. The same is the case in the bordering
regions of Buckingham and Berk shires. Richmond Park, Hampton-Court
Park, Bushy Park, Claremont and Esher Parks, Oatlands, Painshill,
Windsor, Ockham, Bookham--the whole wide country is covered with parks,
woods, and fields, the very hedge-rows of which are dense, continuous
lines of trees. Look into the part of Kent approaching the metropolis
from the heights of Norwood, and the prospect is the same. Many of the
extensive commons hereabout, as Bookham and Streatham commons, are
scattered with fine oaks, some of them very ancient, and diversified
with thickets and green glades, and rather resemble old forests and
parks, than commons as seen elsewhere. Then again, the sandy heaths of
Surrey are covered in many places with miles of Scotch firs. There
certainly is no want of wood in these parts. In the sandy wastes of Old
Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, many thousand acres, principally of
larch, have been planted on the estates of the Dukes of Portland and
Newcastle, Lord Scarborough, Earl Manvers, Colonels Need, Wildman, and
other proprietors. Even the cold hills of the Peak of Derbyshire have
been planted in some parts extensively; and lands in those districts
which were literally unproductive, are now a source of considerable
income from the thinning of the woods. In Scotland the same change is
very visible. All along the borders the good lands are beautifully
cultivated, the bad extensively planted. From the dreary flats about
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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