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crifice for the Royal Oaks, and their Hamadryads, to whom they owe chap.more than a slight submifsion: And he that should deeply consider theprodigious waste which these voracious iron and glafs-works have formerlymade but in one county alone, the county of Sufsex, for one hundred andtwenty miles in length, and thirty in breadth, (for so wide and spaciouswas the ancient Andradswald , of old one entire wood, but of which thereremains now little or no sign) would be touched with no mean indignation.
I named the Sufsex glafs-works; but what spoil and prodigious consump-tion the salt-works had made in Worcestershire , see the complaint of Mr.Camden, speaking of Feckenham-Forest in his days, now necefsitated touse other coal; certainly the goodly rivers and forests of the other Worldwould much better become.these destructive works, our h'on-toorks andSawtviills, than these exhausted countries, and we prove gainers by the■timely removal: I have said this already, and I cannot too often inculcateit for the concerns of a nation, whose only .protection (under God ) are herWooden Walls.
Another thing to be recommended (and which would prove no Iefsthan thirty, in some places forty, and generally twenty years advance)were a good, if well executed, act to save our standards and borderingtrees from the ax of the neighbourhood: And who would not preservetimber, when within so few years the price is almost quadrupled? I afsureyou standards of twenty, thirty, or forty years growth, are of a long dayfor the concernments of a nation.
And though we Rave, in our general chapter of coppices, declared whatby our laws and common usage is expected at every fell, (and which isindeed most requisite, till our store be otherwise-supplied) yet might mucheven of that rigour be abated, by no unfrugal permifsions to take downmore of the standards for the benefit of the underwoods, (especially where,by over-dropping and shade, they interrupt the kindly dews, rains, andinfluences which nourish them), provided that there were a proportionablenumber of.timber-trees duly and thoroughly planted and preserved in thehedge-rows and bordures of our grounds ; in which case, even the totalclearing of some coppices would be to their great advance, as by sad ex-perience has been taught some good husbands, whose necefsities some-times forced them to violate their standards, and more grown treesduring the late Tyranny.
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