Quid majora sequor? Salices, humilesque genistæ,
Aut illæ pecori frondem, aut pastoribus umbram
Sufficiunt, sepemque satis & pabula melli.
Georg. 2.
CHAPTER XX.
Of Fences, Quick-sets, &c.
1. Our main plantation is now finish’d, and our forest adorned with a just variety: But what is yet all this labour, but loss of time, and irreparable expence, unless our young, and (as yet) tender plants be sufficiently guarded with munitions from all external injuries? For, as old Tusser,
If Cattel, or Tony may enter to Crop,
Young Oak is in danger of losing his Top.
But with something a more polish’d stile, though to the same purpose, the best of poets,
Plash fences thy plantation round about,
And whilst yet young, be sure keep Cattel out;
Severest Winters, scorching sun infest,
And sheep, goats, bullocks, all young plants molest;
Yet neither cold, nor the hoar rigid frost,
Nor heat reflecting from the rocky coast,
Like cattel trees, and tender shoots confound,
When with invenom’d teeth the twigs they wound.[176:1]
2. For the reason that so many complain of the improsperous condition of their wood-lands, and plantations of this kind, proceeds from this neglect; though (sheep excepted) there is no employment whatsoever incident to the farmer, which requires less expence to gratifie their expectations: One diligent and skilful man, will govern five hundred acres: But if through any accident a beast shall break into his master’s field; or the wicked hunter make a cap for his dogs and horses, what a clamour is there made for the disturbance of a years crop at most in a little corn! whilst abandoning his young woods all this time, and perhaps many years, to the venomous bitings and treading of cattel, and other like injuries (for want of due care) the detriment is many times irreparable; young trees once cropp’d, hardly ever recovering: It is the bane of all our most hopeful timber.
3. But shall I provoke you by an instance? A kinsman of mine has a wood of more than 60 years standing; it was, before he purchas’d it, expos’d and abandon’d to the cattel for divers years: Some of the outward skirts were nothing save shrubs and miserable starvlings; yet still the place was dispos’d to grow woody; but by this neglect continually suppress’d. The industrious gentleman has fenced in some acres of this, and cut all close to the ground; it is come in eight or nine years, to be better worth than the wood of sixty; and will (in time) prove most incomparable timber, whilst the other part (so many years advanc’d) shall never recover; and all this from no other cause, than preserving it fenc’d: Judge then by this, how our woods come to be so decryed: Are five hundred sheep worthy the care of a shepherd? and are not five thousand oaks worth the fencing, and the inspection of a Hayward?
And shall men doubt to plant, and careful be?[177:1]