me 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}

Let us therefore shut up what we have thus laboriously planted, with
some good quick-set hedge; which,

.......All countries bear, in every ground
As denizen, or inter