earing them from
their places.

The taller the tree the more liable it is to being uprooted by storms;
and if those that are hemmed in, as in the thickly-planted forests,
fall, you may suppose the certain fate of any isolated tree, deprived of
its former protectors, when left to brave and battle with the storm. It
is sure to fall, and may chance to injure any cattle that are within its
reach. This is the great reason why trees are not left in the clearing.
Indeed, it is a less easy matter to spare them when chopping than I at
first imagined, but the fall of one tree frequently brings down two,
three; or even more smaller ones that stand near it. A good chopper will
endeavour to promote this as much as possible by partly chopping through
smaller ones in the direction they purpose the larger one to fall.

I was so desirous of preserving a few pretty sapling beech-trees that
pleased me, that I desired the choppers to spare them; but the only one
that was saved from destruction in the chopping had to pass through a
fiery ordeal, which quickly scorched and withered up its gay green
leaves: it now stands a melancholy monument of the impossibility of
preserving trees thus left. The only thing to be done if you desire
trees, is to plant them while young in favourable situations, when they
take deep root and spread forth branches the same as the trees in our
parks and hedge-rows.

Another plan which we mean to adopt on our land is to leave several
acres of forest in a convenient situation, and chop and draw out the old
timbers for fire-wood, leaving the younger growth for ornament. This
method of preserving a grove of trees is not liable to the objections
formerly stated, and combines the useful with the ornamental.

There is a strange excitement created in the mind whilst watching the
felling of one of the gigantic pines or oaks of the forest. Proudly and
immoveably it seems at first to resist the storm of blows that assail
its massy trunk, from the united axes of three or even four choppers. As
the work of destruction continues, a slight motion is perceived--an
almost imperceptible quivering of the boughs. Slowly and slowly it
inclines, while the loud rending of the trunk at length warns you that
its last hold on earth is gone. The axe of the chopper has performed its
duty; the motion of the falling tree becomes accelerated every instant,
till it comes down in thunder on the plain, with a crash that makes the
earth tremble