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Show 288 EFFECTS OF TREATING nature, in every way in which nature can bear upon the point at issue. . d Imported oak has been blamed for tb1s decay,. a1~ it is true that the imported oa~, an~ ":lore .esp~ci~h~ the oak imported fr?m America, ts mfenor o But oak which once grew m the forests of Engla"!'ld. t d the deterioration is not confined to t~e tm)gr ~t oak . and however bad that may_ be? It . cou . n inoc~late the oaks of the forest ~Ith It~ de1etenous ualities, any more than t~e spectes of msect called qA men.c an bl.1 gb t which mfests apple-trees, could 1 D · t~ke its departure for Hereford or e~onr lmme-diatel on the landing o~ a .cargo o~ Ame~wan apples L. y ool The rot IS m the timber 1tself,-that aist of1 vaenr pi nfe·r ior qual.i ty; and the caus.e w h y ·t h 1 as been allowed to degenerate is, that they hy who~ oak-trees have been bred have not been ca~efut 1.n the observation of nature, but have proceeded m t~e1r operations by means that had no natural foundatiOn. The object of the grower has bee.n to get goodly trees-trees that pleased the eye, wrthout.any regard to the quality of the timber; and t~1e obJe~t of the nurseryman has been to rear up. h1s seedhngs and get them to m~rket as soon and 1n as showy a con-dition as poss1ble. . Jt has been said that the wrong oak has been cultivated and that may be true, for the very same circumsta~ces which led to the. wrong mode of treatment may have led to the usmg of the wrong lant The collector of acorns would naturally ~roc~ed upon the joint principles of," the most easily obtained and the most sal.e?-ble. 1 d.o not know that it is in all cases a positive fact, that the worst kinds of oak are the most prolific of acorns ;. but it is a sort of generally-observed law among. vegetables that where there is a great deal of frmt, the wood 'is soft and perishable. And that has n~a son on its side; trees do not work miracle~ an.Y more than men do ; and, therefore, i~ th~ir actiOn ts m o~e turned in any particular directiOn, 1t must be less m ON TIMBER. 289 any other. Fruit trees are often killed tn the wood by excessive bearing; and therefore it is natural t~ suppose that a similar excess must injure the wood of an oak. Now, it generally hrtppens that in the same species, whether in the same or in different varieties of the same species, the productions run largest when they are most numerous. Hence the acorns of the oak having the inferior timber are the most profitable for the. gatherer both to gather and to sell; and those two circumstances are quite sufficient to bring them to the market in preference to, and even exclusiye of, the other,.-more especially as the pur- ) chaser 1s to grow seedlmgs and not oak timber. The question of the timber is, indeed, a question seventy years hence with those who deal in acorns and seedling oaks, at:d as they have small chance of hearing any complamt th?-t may be made about the quality, they of course g1ve themselves very little concern about it. But still granting that the acorns are those of an inferior oak, and that there are those mercantile considerations in favour of their use, that is no justification of the breeder or the planter of the oak. An acorn is not an oak; there is merely that in it which will, in time, make an oak out of other material~, if it is put properly in the way of so doing. Nor 1s there any reason that an acorn should not be ~nad~ to produce a better oak, than the one upon which It grew. "Improving the breed" is constantly done by those who rear domestic animals and has been done in the case of cultivated plants' more especially those that are used as human food' from the b~ginning of history,-and before it, fo; we .meet With the names of those cultivated plants wh1ch h~ve s~parate types in a wild state, in the most anc~ent histories ; and those plants must have been cultivated out of something. The most learned· bota~ists of the pres£mt day cannot be absolutely certam about the original potato ; various species Bb |
