34 AGRICULTURAL SURVEY

«“ Planting. The scotch fir is the least nice of any of the sorts, and grows with me hkea weed, and withas little trouble as gorse. The larch and Weymouth pine are equally hardy and prosperous upon all the land I plant, which is of the bad sort, and grow as fast and as well as upon the best soils I have ever seen. I plant birch in all my plan- fations as nurses to other plants, and as underwood; and in both cases they are very useful and advantageous, drawing up and keeping warm oaks, beech, ash,&c. which all grow as well as possible. The beech(under a favourable mode of planting) grows extremely kind and well in every respeét; and I am now cutting ash poles, remarkably kind and good, by way of thinning my plan- tations of oak upon land never let before I began to farm and plant, at so much as one shilling per acre.

«© As to the uses of birch. My birch is felling from November to the beginning of March, though the sooner the better, as it is very early in its sap in the spring, bleeding exceedingly if not cut before March. I first let the twig- ging to the besom makers at so much per bottle(or bundle), measuring four feet in the girth. The twigger lets the bottles lie till March, then takes them away, and stacks them like corn, and thatches them. They must, however, be tolerably dry before stacking, as otherwise they would be apt to heat and mouldin the stack. The besom makers suit their own convenience as to the time of working up the twigs, generally beginning the latter end of the year, as soon as they become properly dry and seasoned for use. The making up is winter employment generally. I then cut out the shafts or staves, which I sell by the thousand or hundred. The tree thus dismembered I sell to the brush- makers, which is converted into brush heads, painters’ brush handles, bannisters, spindles, distaffs,&c. and short pieces are worked up by clog makers and shoe heal cutters, &c. sell these poles by the score, or by the groce of the articles they are converted to. In the last case they are cut up in the rough before they are carried from the woods.