Clumps on common land

Where a large tract of waste heath or common is near the boundary of a park, if it cannot be enclosed, it is usual to dot certain small patches of trees upon it, with an idea of improvement; a few clumps of miserable Scotch firs, surrounded by a mud wall, are scattered over a great plain, which the modern improver calls "clumping the common." It is thus that Hounslow Heath has been clumped; and even the vast range of country formerly the Forest of Sherwood, has submitted to this meagre kind of misnamed ornament.