21:2

A DISCOURSE

i. Park, worth six thousand pounds, it is believed there were a thousandmuch above that value, since, in what is now inclosed, it is evidenttouching one hundred worth a thousand pounds. I am informed that anOak, (I think in Shropshire, ) growing lately in a copse of my Lord'Craven’s, yielded nineteen tons and a half of timber, twenty-three cordof fire-wood, two load of brush, and two load of bark: And my worthyfriend, Leonard Pinckney, Esq. lately First Clerk of his Majesty’s-Kitchen, did afsure me, that one John Garland built a very handsome"barn, containing five bays, with pan, posts, beams, spars, &c. of one soletree, growing in Worksop Park. I will close this with an instance whichI greatly value, because it is transmitted to me from that Honourable,and Noble Person Sir Edward Harley. “ I am (says he) afsured by aninquisition taken about three hundred years since, that a park of mine,and some adjacent woods, had not then a tree capable to bear acorns; yetthat very park I have seen full of great Oaks, and most of them in theextremest wane of decay. The trunk of one of these Oaks afforded somuch timber, as upon the place would have yielded fifteen pounds, and-did completely seat with wainscot-pews a whole church. You mayplease, (says he, writing to Sir Robert Murray,) to remember when youwere here, you took notice of a large tree, newly fallen ; when it waswrought up, it proved very hollow and unsound : One of its cavities con-tained two hogsheads of water: Another was filled with better stuff, waxand honey : Notwithstanding all defects, it yielded, besides three tons•of timber, twenty-three cords of wood. But my own trees are but chipsin comparison of a tree in the neighbourhood, in which every foot for-ward, one with another, was half a ton of timber; it bore five feet square,forty feet long, and contained twenty ton of timber; most of it sold forone pound per ton; besides that, the boughs afforded twenty-five cordsof fuel-wood : This was called the Lady-Oak. Is it not pity such goodlycreatures should be devoted to Vulcan?” So far this Noble Gentleman,to which I would add Dim, a deep execration of iron-mills, and I hadalmost said iron-masters too,

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,Quos ego—sed motos praestat componere-

for I should never finish, to pursue these instances through our oncegoodly magazines of timber for all uses, growing in this our native.country, comparable, as I said, to any we can produce of elder times,