his plants, contrasting their progress from month
to month, and year after year. The child of tender years, the most
ignorant peasant, have alike their faculties of interest and observation
aroused and excited by the contemplation of the gradual rise and change
in the progress of the plant. We have heard from those unable to speak
the English language, and in the poorest circumstances, poetic
description and the liveliest manifestation of admiration at a thriving
growing wood. Again, to the man who is engrossed with harassing mental
occupations, what pleasure and satisfaction is this contemplation; and,
as in the case of our immortal novelist, not only giving immediate
consolation and happiness, but powerfully incentive to intellectual
effort.

Let us turn, however, to the practical bearings of our subject; and we
shall take the case, say, of an estate of 20,000 acres. Let us suppose
500 acres to be arable, and 4,500 acres, either from the nature of the
soil or its altitude, to be unfit for any improvement whatever. 1000
acres would be probably required for ordinary pasture lands, and 10,000
acres for hill pasture. It is far from our wish that any plantations
should diminish the already scanty population, or unduly press upon the
pastoral agricultural occupants. We therefore have given roughly what
may be held as full souming for stocks upon such an estate. It must
be always recollected it is not acres alone that will sustain sheep or
cattle, or maintain a first-class stock; on the contrary, it is the
quality of the ground, and whether enclosed and drained. The matter of
enclosure is one that has long been recognised as most essential in the
case of sheep grounds, but the cost until the introduction of
wire-fencing, was so great, as to be almost prohibitory. Hill pastures
should be enclosed just as in the case of arable lands, and with
efficient drainage and judicious heather burning, it is not too much to
say that at least one-third more in number could be pastured on the same
ground, and the stock would be of a higher class than on lands unfenced
and undrained.

We have now left 4000 acres or so for plantation. If the proprietor be
in a position to do so, and do not object to lay out some money
unproductively, he will cause trees to be planted along all the roads
through the estate, putting clumps and beltings near the farm steadings.
This is a matter that is sometimes entirely neglected, rendering the
buildings co