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OF WESTMORELAND- 313

there is plenty of trees at Norton’s Sound in latitude (4° 55; and timber for thè uſe of ſhips in the Britiſh navy has been cut even at Kamtichatka, the very end of the earth, where the ſoil is barren in the extreme, and covered with Summer ſnow, and where the Winters are rigorous beyond the conception of an inhabitant of Europe.

That Weſtmoreland has been a wooded county, is evident from trees found in moſſes on the higheſt hills; and ſtatutes and regulations made long after the Conqueſt, ſince which time the climate has not been changed for the worſe, are full of the mention of foreſts, and chaces, and parks, and maſtage, and pannage, and vert, and veniſon, and greenhue, and regarders, and foreſters, and verderors, and an hundred other names and titles reſpe@ing the pre- iervation of the woods and the game.

The valuable plantations at Lowther-hall, the" ſeat of the Earl of Lonfdale, ſhow how well calculated the ſoil and climate of Weſtnoreland ſtill are for the growth oft timber, which, it cannot be queſtioned, would thrive over all the county as well now as it did five hundred yéars ago. The profits of planting are ſo diſtant, and ſo few perſons, looking eighty or an hundred years beyond the preſent day, are willing to ſacrifice a paltry intereſt for the ſake of a rêmote poíterity, thar perhaps it may be neceſlary for Government to encourage by premiums what in the end would tucn out fo greatly to the advantage of the com=- munity, Theſe might be diſtributed with much propri- ety by the Board of Agriculture, whoſe income ſeems to be far too moderate for the ſupport of ſo important an eſtabliſhment, the obje&ts of whoſe ſuperintendence are innumerable, and the field of whoſe operations is exten- five as the iſland itſelf.

To the north of Shap lies a very extenſive coinmon called the Scars, where between two and three thouſand

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