Planting was almost every where carrying on with great activity in 1805, and the beneficial change which it has produced on the face of the country is generally conspicuous. Immense tracts in the neighbourhood of Cheadle, then producing only brown heath and peat, are now covered with vigorous growing plantations of pines, larches, birches, oaks, and other valuable trees. Great part of the waste land known by the name of Delamere Forest is planted with oaks among wild pines, as nurses, and both are thriving exceedingly; the pines being gradually cut in, or thinned out, to give room to the oaks. As far as we saw this government plantation, it appeared to be exceedingly well managed; though we think the idea of government growing its own naval timber, or any part of it, quite unsuitable to the present age, and more calculated to form a nucleus for government jobs, places, and pensions, than to answer any useful purpose. But the most surprising effects of plantations made within the last twenty-six years, have been produced in the neighbourhood of the lakes. We walked or rode through the lake district in 1805, and, having not long before visited Loch Lomond, we were struck with the nakedness of the Westmoreland and Cumberland hill sides; we were not less so this season at their clothed appearance, when we entered the Valley of Windermere by Newby Bridge. This charming effect was continued the whole of the way to Grasmere, and, though suspended for a short distance, reappeared again at Keswick. Near this town, when we first visited it in 1805, the sides of a considerable mountain adjoining Skiddaw had just begun to be enclosed, preparatory to planting. These sides are now clothed with a magnificent mantle of plantation. A conical hill, between Keswick and Penrith, is entirely planted from the base to the summit, and will, in a few years, form a noble ornament to the country for many miles round. The extensive ridge of land on which Penrith Beacon stands, forming a striking feature in the view from Brougham Hall, &c., is also planted over its whole surface; and the Beacon now appears like an ornamental building in the woods of a park.
