Ignorance, Prejudice, Indolence, and Barbarism

[Walter Scott], anonymous review of The Forester's Guide and Profitable Planter. By Robert Monteath. (With Plates.) Second Edition. Edinburgh, 1824, in Quarterly Review 36 (October 1827) 558–600, rpt. in The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. I (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1841), pp. 32-49 (at 34, col. 2): We have ourselves seen an account of a sale of growing trees upon an estate in this district where the proceeds amounted to no less than six thousand pounds, a very large sum considering that the country was overstocked with wood, the demands for it confined to those of rural economy, and the means of transporting it extremely imperfect. There must have been a fall of large and valuable timber to have produced such a sum under such circumstances. The guardians of the noble proprietor, when they made the sale, seem to have given directions for enclosing the natural wood, with a view to its preservation. Nevertheless, about seventy or eighty years afterwards, there was…