o. a
Catalogue of English Authors on Agriculture, Gardening, &c. There is
another edition in 1773, with additions. His intelligent Catalogue is
brought down to the end of the year 1772. This volume of Tracts contains
an infinity of ingenious and curious articles. One of the chapters
contains "A Plan for Planting all the Turnpike Roads in England with
Timber Trees."[53] He most zealously wishes to encourage planting. "I
believe (says this candid writer) that one of the principal reasons why
few persons plant, springs from a fearful conjecture that their days
will have been passed, before the forest can have risen. But let not the
parent harbour so selfish an idea; it should be his delight, to look
forward to the advantage which his children would receive from the
timber which he planted, contented if it flourished every year beneath
his inspection; surely there is much more pleasure in planting of trees,
than in cutting of them down. View but the place where a fine tree
stands, what an emblem does it afford of present beauty and of future
use; examine the spot after the noble ornament shall have been felled,
and see how desolate it will appear. Perhaps there is not a better
method of inducing youth to have an early inclination for planting,
than for fathers, who have a landed estate, to persuade those children
who are to inherit it, as soon as they come to years of discretion, to
make a small nursery, and to let them have the management of it
themselves; they will then see the trees yearly thriving under their
hands: as an encouragement to them, they should, when the trees are at a
fit growth to plant out, let them have the value of them for their
pocket money. This will, in their tender years, fix so strong an idea of
the value, and the great consequence of planting, as will never be
eradicated afterwards; and many youths, of the age of twenty-five,
having planted quick growing trees, may see the industry of their
juvenile years amply rewarded at that early age, a time when most young
men begin to know the value of money."[54] Mr. Pope, in one of his
letters to Mr. Allen, thus discovers his own generous mind:--"I am now
as busy in planting for myself as I was lately in planting for another.
I am pleased to think my trees will afford shade and fruit to others,
when I shall want them no more." Mr. Addison's admirable recommendation
of planting, forms No. 583 of the Spectator. He therein says, "When a
man considers that the