delighted, and by which he obtained his living. I am also sorry that either of the authors should hint at invidious national distinctions between Scotch and English, as if they really were two distinct species of animals; and that the baronet should have known so little of the acquirements of gardeners in general, as to have led him to treat of them as a race deserving to be proscribed from the management of forest trees; a department at least very closely connected with their profession, and which forms a part of their study in the early part of their lives.

I have been led into these reflections by the general tenour of the pamphlet, and shall conclude my brief notice with the following extract concerning the Quércus pedunculàta and sessiliflora, or Ròbur, entreating your readers to communicate through this Magazine any particulars they may think worthy of notice, respecting the habits, thickness of bark, and quality of timber of each of these species, and their sub

varieties.

66

Among all our writers on planting which I have read, not one that I recollect, except Mr. Loudon, in his Encyclopædia of Plants, which I saw since I first sketched these observations, has alluded to the quality of the two distinct species of British oak; only botanists notice two species. Now I well recollect that when I was in the Forest of Dean, the Quércus sessiliflòra was designated by the old experienced wood-cutters as the knot acorn oak, from the acorn growing in clusters, close to the stalk, and considered as producing much better timber than the other kind. As well as I can recollect, the leaves have a darker hue, and more glossy appearance, with more numerous branches subdivided into a greater number of smaller ones, diverging from the stem in a more horizontal direction; whereas the branches of the other species diverge with more acute angles in a more upright position, and do not produce so many small branches, nor such close heads. Might not the knot acorn oak, from its more numerous and smaller limbs and branches, with more annual buds, with young shoots, whereby the tree is increased in substance, tend to give it a firmer, tougher, and harder texture than the other species, similar to what the Billingtonian system of pruning would effect?" (p. 57, 58, 59.) Both species are described and illustrated by wood-cuts in the Encyclopædia of Plants, and the parts of fructification minutely described and illustrated in the first volume of the Magazine of Natural History. I intended to give an extract respecting a process of planting an extensive "bare rock," but I must refer to the work itself for this and other amusing and useful hints.

Perthshire, July, 1830.

A. G.

ART. XII. Pontey's "Forest Pruner” versus Cruickshank's “Practical Planter," on the Subject of pruning Fir Trees. By A YORK

SHIREMAN.

Sir,

IN common with the reading and thinking part of mankind, it is with me, as I am happy to find it is also with yourself, a subject of unfeigned regret that book-making, in contradistinction to book-writing, is daily becoming much too prevalent the inevitable consequence of such practice is, on the one hand, by their conflicting contents, to distract the public attention; while, on the other, their unpardonable repetition of superannuated and long exploded dogmas tends only to disgust.

There is another practice also, and that not the most honourable, with which these modern babblers stand charged,

-an instance of which, in addition to the one I am about to complain of, you point out in your review of Mr. Cruickshank's Practical Planter, - viz. whenever they attempt to palm upon the world what they would wish to have believed as original and good, they generally misquote those authors whose writings seem to stand in the way of such theories being received.

Among the description of modern book-makers just alluded to, Mr. Cruickshank (as shown in p. 456, 457. of your Maga zine) stands, I think, deservedly preeminent.

It is not, however, my present intention to observe upon that gentleman's Practical Planter, further than as it applies to Mr. Pontey's book called the Forest Pruner, the principles of which are, as have been proved by thousands (myself among the rest), invaluable. If, then, in the course of my observations, I happen to show that Mr. Cruickshank, in his Practical Planter, is attempting to retail old and exploded errors to the public as his own (for it does not appear he gives us more than his ipse dixit for it); and, to support his assertions, has misquoted that passage in Pontey's Pruner which appears to oppose them; by putting your readers upon their guard against such malpractices, I shall have rendered the state some service: for, to say the least of such acts, wherever duplicity is 4 practised, the result can never be honourable to the parties, and rarely beneficial to the public.

In order, however, to enable your readers to put a proper value upon the assertions in the Practical Planter, and the demonstrated proofs given by Mr. Pontey in his Pruner, it seems necessary to premise that Mr. Cruickshank acknowledges his practice to have been confined chiefly to one situation (at Careston, the seat of the Earl of Fife): its whole length

he fixes at fourteen years, the greater proportion of which, it appears, he was employed in the nursery: while the practice of Mr. Pontey has extended to nearly every county in the kingdom; and its duration, at the period of the last edition of the Pruner, fell little short of forty years. To prove Mr. Cruickshank guilty of retailing a superannuated dogma respecting the pruning of fir trees, I need only refer you to Nicol's Planter, published in 1799 (p. 213.), where he says, "it can never be proper to lop the branch of a fir tree by the bole. From the resinous juice which follows the tool, at any season of the year, all wounds become, and continue to be, blemishes." How far such dogmas have been exploded is evident, from the almost universal adoption and beneficial effects of Mr. Pontey's method of pruning.

Mr. Cruickshank says, "Independently of any other consideration, the very form in which a fir grows appears sufficient to teach us that pruning, if not attended with actual injury, can at least be productive of no benefit to the tree. An ash or an elm, for example, has a constant tendency, if left to itself, to depart from the shape which constitutes its chief value. It is continually throwing out branches, which become rivals to the leader, and either bend it out of its upright course, or starve it by exhausting an undue quantity of sap, and thereby disqualifying it for carrying up the tree. Hence the great use of pruning trees of this kind is to protect the leader from the rivalship of the other branches, to the end that as much of the nourishment drawn from the earth may be employed in promoting the growth of the stem, and as little of it expended on the top, a part which is comparatively of little value, as is consistent with the laws of vegetation. But, in the case of firs, this use of pruning has no place. Their horizontal branches never interfere with the leader, nor obstruct its progress in the smallest degree. It always, unless broken accidentally, or killed by the frost, appears above the most elevated of the horizontal shoots; and they, instead of injuring or supplanting, seem to assist it in keeping its perpendicular position, as those of the same elevation grow of equal length all around it, and produce a perfect equilibrium. Hence it would appear that the pruning of firs, supposing it harmless, can yet be productive of no positive good, so that to practise it would be to labour and lay out money for no end; a species of industry and expenditure which deserves any epithet but that of rational."

Pruning ash or elm, it appears, then, by your review, is allowed by Cruickshank, in common with every well informed man, to be beneficial; and here may I be allowed to

enquire in what way is pruning beneficial? Most assuredly by producing a greater quantity of straight clean timber. If, then, it is acknowledged by this author, that pruning is necessary to produce clean straight timber, the want of such pruning must produce the reverse, viz. knottiness, short stems, and large branches.

The principle of pruning being admitted, I may be allowed to ask, who is to determine or draw the line as to where this principle shall cease to operate? Are the innumerable proofs that we have daily before our eyes, in every part of the country, of the beneficial effects of the judicious pruning of fir trees, to be quietly laid aside to allow this man of fourteen years' experience (who has the impudence to ground some of his nostrums on what he calls "careful calculation rather than on actual experience") to say, hitherto shall it go and no farther? Certainly not; without he can clearly show that Dame Nature, who has been heretofore considered consistent in her operations, has, in this case, to suit his dogmas, falsified all her previous practices.

He has, indeed, attempted to show that the shape of the fir tree is less liable to suffer from the want of pruning than that of others (a fact previously very well known); but as to the comparative increase of clean straight timber, which, as Pontey incontrovertibly shows by his plates and works, can only be produced to any beneficial extent by pruning, our wordy author, it appears, ventures not a syllable; unless the following paragraph can be taken as such, being Cruickshank's misquotation of Pontey's Pruner, and the false conclusions founded upon it of which I complain.

Mr. Cruickshank proceeds: :-"Harmless, however, the process in question is far from being; and I have known more than one thriving fir plantation utterly ruined by it." Here, as the advocate of pruning firs, I may, perhaps, be allowed to ask the author, whether it was in the use of Mr. Pontey's theory, or the abuse of it (for I have somewhere read, the best of things may be abused), that such plantations were "utterly ruined"? And surely, taking the immense importance of such an event into consideration, I shall not be deemed extravagant, or unnecessarily dubious, under Mr. Cruickshank's circumstances (having been caught tripping by yourself and others), if I enquire where those plantations were, also their age and state previously to such ruinous application, with such other circumstantial information as will enable me and the public to come to something like a correct conclusion. Bare assertions, where abundant proof is, or ought to be, at hand, are, generally speaking, very suspicious, but more par

ticularly so in his case. Mr. Cruickshank proceeds: -" Mr. Pontey tells us that it is the cutting off too many branches at once that causes injury; and that if we take away only two or three tiers at a time no bad effect will ensue." All this is very true; but Mr. Cruickshank goes on : — "Let any person remove this number of living branches from a Scots fir or spruce, of seven or eight years old; let him, at the same time, ascertain its height, and mark some of the plants contiguous to it, which are exactly of the same size. By measuring it and them three years afterwards, and comparing the progress of the former, made in this interval, with that of the latter, he will have a practical demonstration of the utter fallacy of Mr. Pontey's assertions." Here I would ask this immaculate author, does Mr. Pontey indeed state, "that two or three tiers of living branches are to be removed from a Scots for or spruce of seven or eight years old?" Most assuredly not. Let Mr. Pontey speak for himself:-"If the first pruning took place when the plants were about 8 ft. high, it might then be necessary to displace two, or at most three tiers of the lower branches, and two years afterwards two sets more of the same description; after which intervals of three years might elapse between the prunings, never displacing more than two tiers at once, except more should prove dead." Now, I am aware, to a casual reader, or an unpractised man, the difference between a Scots fir or spruce of seven or eight years old, and one of 8 ft. high, may appear exceedingly trivial; but what is the matter of fact? A spruce fir at three years old, upon an average, will be from 12 to 14 in. high, having upon it two tiers of branches: supposing it then to be replanted into a nursery bed, it becomes four years old, and has three tiers upon it, having added about 4 in. to its height; let it then be removed to its ultimate destination. The first year after planting it upon the forest ground it will seldom grow more than about 3 in.; it is now five years old, and has got four tiers of branches: the next two or three years it will not average more than about 12 in. per annum. We have now got a fir, seven or eight years old, with six or seven tiers of branches upon it, and from 4 to 5 ft. high: now, by the same rule, to produce a fir 8 ft. high, it must be about eleven years old, and have ten tiers of branches upon it. If the statement above be correct as an average, and Mr. Cruickshank shows in your Magazine (p. 466.) I am not far off, it then appears that Mr. Cruickshank's statement, of Mr. Pontey recommending from two to three tiers to be removed out of six or seven tiers of branches, is totally false. The fact is, that two and at most three tiers at once," and those only in the first pruning, when they are all within 2 ft. of the ground,