58 PATTERSON v. M'CAUSLAND.—3 BLAND.

By the common law of England, where the owner of a forest, in
which others had a right of common for their cattle, felled the
timber trees, he was allowed to inclose it so as* to exclude such
commonable cattle for three years thereafter, to prevent them from
browzing and eating down the young spring before it had grown
up beyond their reach; which term of inclosure was, by a statute
passed in the year 1482, extended to seven years, for the more
effectual preservation of the young growth, 22 Ed. 4, c. 7; Sir Fran-
cis Barrington's Case, 8 Co. 271; G Jac. Law Dic. 450, v. Wood;
which new growth, it has been held in England, will attain a suffi-
cient size to be cut as timber fit for many uses at twenty years of
age. 35 Hen. 8, c. 17; 13 Eliz. c. 12; E. N. B. 59; 2 Inst.642; Bac.
Abr. Tit. Tythes, C. 4; Richard Liford's Case, 11 Co. 47; 2 Mick.
Am. Sylva, 144. But the plantations which have been made in
73 modern times, in England, so * far as they have gone, afford
perhaps the only, or certainly the least questionable evi-
dence as to the growth and age of forest trees. In such cases it
has been observed, that oaks and beech are not fit for use, as tim-
ber, until they attain about fifty or sixty years of age; but that
the Scotch fir (pinus sylvestris,) larch, (larix,) ash, and chestnut,
become fit for use after a growth of twenty or thirty years. The
larch, in particular, than which there is no tree in England of
quicker growth, is said, on an average in favorable situations, to
increase until fifty years of age, at the rate of half an inch in di-
ameter and two feet and a half in height each year. Instances are
mentioned where in Scotland, young oaks, valuable for their bark
alone, are usually cut at from twelve to twenty-five years old,
Rees' Cyclo. v. Plantation.

I do not understand, however, that any of these historical ac-
counts of the plantations of forest trees have, as yet, covered as
much as the lapse of an hundred years. They make no mention
of the expectation of life that may be attributed to any such trees;
nor do they speak of the average term of the existence of any of
them. It has been said that in England the oak attains an age,
in some instances, of more than a thousand years; but that the
beech, the ash, and the sycamore (acer pseudo platanus,) most likely
never live half so long. But all plants, as well as all animals, are
alike subject to the inexorable law of mortality, as is sufficiently
shewn by the bountiful provision made by nature for their repro-
duction. Hence, and from the well known fact, that all plants are
subject to diseases, it necessarily follows, that all trees, like ani-
mals, have an average and ultimate term of existence beyond
which their lives are rarely extended, or cannot be prolonged.
Rees' Cyclo. v. Timber; Thompson's Chem. b. 4, c. 2, s. 13, and c. 3,
s. 6; Roget's Animal and Vegetable Physiology, part 4. (a)

(a) LOUDON, in his Arboretum Britanicum, states that the oldest oak in
England is supposed to be the Parliament Oak, so called from the tradition