In Ayrshire, we found very extensive plantations, of from five to thirty years' growth, on one nobleman's estate, from which not a tree has been thinned since they were planted at the rate of five thousand plants to the acre. The mass has become impervious to either man or cattle; and, as timber or fuel, it would not, if now cut down, as the very intelligent gardener on the estate informed us, pay the cost of the trees, nearly four times the price, thirty years ago, that they are now, before they were removed from the nursery. On another nobleman's estate, in the same country, we found oaks in more than double the above number per acre, which, we were informed, it was never intended to thin, but to leave to grow up together, and choke and kill one another, in imitation of nature. We have no objection to this plan, provided it be not recommended as good, with a view to profit. A plantation composed of trees all planted or sown at the same time, can never be said to be a just imitation of a state of nature. In natural woods we find trees of all ages; and hence, the ease with which the stronger overcome the weaker, and aquaire a timber size; but where all are sown or planted at once, and at equal distances, all are generally contending for what none can attain without the assistance of art, and the whole grow up together in a mass of etiolated rods, with only here and there a tree to be found which has attained a timber-like size. The only case in which this result does not take place, in an extreme degree, is when different genera of trees have been planted in mixture: in which case those of the most vigorous habits and rapid growth will overcome the others. As contrasts to the plantations on the two estates mentioned, we may refer to those of Monkwood, near Ayr, in which the trees (each judiciously pruned so as to form a handsome stem, more or less clothed from the ground upwards) stand at proper distances; and the thinnings, as Mr. Smith of the Monkwood Nursery informed us, have more than paid a corn rent, reckoning from the time the plantation was made. We may also refer to one or two others in Dumfries and Kirkcudbright shires, and especially to those at Closeburn and Terragles, as being profitably managed; though, in the latter case, and as, indeed, in most others that we saw, the trees are too closely pruned.
