[Gutenberg 53678] • On Naval Timber and Arboriculture / With Critical Notes on Authors who have Recently Treated the Subject of Planting

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 edition. Excerpt: ... VII. Cruickshank's Practical Planter. After the preceding parts of this volume had gone to press, we received a copy of Cruickshank's Practical Planter. We endeavour to give a short view of the contents. The author commences with some general remarks on the expediency and profit of laying uncultivated ground under timber, stating, rather too strongly, the very superior income derivable from forest than from heathy moors, and its advantages to the soil. No doubt, a great portion of the higher and more rocky part of Scotland is susceptible of little other improvement than planting; and, under timber, would produce more than ten times the income that it does in pasture; and the patriotic motive of embellishing his country, and enriching his countrymen, may excuse his having drawn the advantages of planting in rather high colours. Mr Cruickshank's statement (as he says, designedly kept rather below the truth), that an acre of moor, of average quality, covered with Scotch fir, sixty years planted, would contain 600 trees, value 10s. each, differs considerably from what has come within our experience. The timber of an acre of Scotch fir, sixty years planted in such waste ground as occurs in the valley of the Tay, will not average much more than one hundred pounds per acre on the spot, and laid down on the quay at Newcastle (the place to which the greater part of the Scotch fir on the east of Scotland is carried), would not produce L. 300 per acre. . -i... .. In order the more to encourage planting, Mr Cruickshank runs into a speculative statement of the fertilizing influence of planting upon the soil, in rather a novel manner, leaving out the particular facts, which, he says, had come under his own observation, and adducing one as proof, ..