40 TRANSPLANTING. 
solutely necessary to remove them, it should be done with an mstru- 
ment called atransplanter; which may be purchased in any 
ironmonger’s shop, and the use of which is to take up a 
sufficient quantity of earth with the plant to remove it with- 
out disturbing the roots. 
The uses of transplanting are various. When seeds are 
sown, and the young plants from them begin to make their 
appearance, they will generally be found to bemuch too thick; 
and they will require thinning, either by drawing some of 
them out and throwing them away, or by removing them to 
another bed bytransplanting. This, in the case of annuals, 
is called by the gardeners pricking out. The young plants 
are taken up with a small trowel, and replaced in a hole 
made for them, and the earth pressed round them, with the same 
trowel: the only care necessary, being to make them firm at the root, 
and yet to avoid injuring the tender spongioles. Gardeners do this 
with a dibber, which they hold in the right hand, and after putting 
in the young plant with the left hand, they press the earth round it 
with the dibber in a manner that I never could manage to imitate. bi 
have found the trowel, however, do equally well, though it takes up 
rather more time. 
Another use of transplanting is to remove trees and shrubs from 
the nursery to where they are permanently to remain. To enable 
this to be done with safety, the trees and shrubs in commercial nurse- 
ries are prepared by being always removed every year, or every other 
year, whether they are sold or not. The effect of these frequent re- 
moyals is to keep the roots short, and yet provided with numerous 
spongioles; for as they are always pruned, or as the gardeners call 
it, “cut in,” on every removal, and as the effect of pruning is to in- 
duce the roots pruned to send out two short fibrous roots armed with 
spongioles, in the place of every one cut off, the roots, though con- 
fined to a small space, become abundant. ‘The reverse of this is the 
case, when plants are left in a natural state. It has been found, from 
experience, that plants imbibe more food than they absolutely require 
“as nourishment from the soil, and that they eject part of it; also that 
their roots will not re-imbibe this excrementitious matter, but are 
continually in search of fresh soil. To provide for this the fibrous 
roots are possessed of an extraordinary power of elongating them 
