THE 



JOURNAL i 



Vol. IV. 



JANUARY, 1850. 



No. 7. 



In a country where thousands of new rural 

 homes are every year being made, how 

 many times do the new proprietors sigh for 

 lakge trees. " Ah, if one could only have 

 half a dozen, — two or three, — nay, even a 

 single one of the beautiful elms that waste 

 their beauty b\' the road side of some un- 

 frequented lane, or stands unappreciated in 

 some farmer's meadow, who grudges it 

 ground room!" 



" And is there no successful way of trans- 

 planting such trees?" inquires the impa- 

 tient owner of a new site, who feels that 

 there should be some special process — 

 some patent regenerator of that forest 

 growth, which his predecessors have so cru- 

 elly despoiled, — his predecessors, to whom 

 cord-wood was of more consequence than 

 the charms of sylvan landscape. 



Though there is great delight in raising 

 a tree from a liliputian specimen no higher 

 than one's knee, — nay, even from the seed 

 itself, — in feeling, as it grows upward and 

 heavenward, year by year, till the little 

 thing that had to be sheltered with rods, 

 stuck about it, to prevent its being over- 

 looked and trodden upon, has so far over- 

 topped us that it now shelters and gratefully 

 overshadows us; though, as we have said, 

 chere is great delight in this, yet it must be 



Vol. iv. 22 



part and parcel of other delights. To a 

 person who has just " settled" upon a bare 

 field, where he has only a new house and 

 a " view" of his neighborhood to look at, 

 we must not be too eloquent about the 

 pleasure of raising oaks from the acorn. 

 He is too much in the condition of the hun- 

 gry man, who is told to be resigned, for 

 there will be no hunger in heaven. It is 

 the present state of affairs that, at this mo- 

 ment, lies nearest to him. How, in other 

 words, shall a field, as bare as a desert, be 

 at once enlivened with a few large trees ? 



Some ten or fifteen years ago, an inge- 

 nious Scotch baronet — Sir Henry Stuart — 

 published a goodly octavo to the world, 

 which apparently solved the whole mystery. 

 And it was not all theory; for the baronet's 

 own park was actually planted with forest 

 trees of various kinds — oaks, ashes, elms, 

 beeches, of all sizes, from twenty-five to 

 sixty feet in height, and with fine heads. 

 The thing was not only done, but the park 

 was there, growing in the finest luxuriance ; 

 and half a dozen years after its creation, 

 arboriculturists of every degree, from Sir 

 Walter Scott down to humble ditchers, 

 went to look at it, and pronounced it good, 

 and the thing itself altogether satisfactory. 



Sir Henry Stuart's process, though it 



