Trees 141 



half-hearted way for two years, finally gives up the struggle, in 

 spite of thinning out its branches, wrapping its trunk with straw, 

 watering, mulching and every other kind of coddling an anxious 

 owner can devise ; while your oak, bought at the same nursery and 

 planted under exactly the same conditions, may never know it was 

 moved. For giving a softening touch, a settled look to a bald new 

 house, reconciling it at once to the landscape, nothing is so helpful 

 as a good sized tree. The one that can be planted very near a 

 dwelling, and not exclude the light and air from its living-rooms, 

 is the high-arching elm. How well our forefathers understood 

 the use of this most graceful tree! 



On large estates it pays to own the apparatus for moving 

 big trees; or, neighbours and improvement societies may well 

 combine to buy one. One enthusiastic amateur has reduced the 

 percentage of loss to less than 5 per cent, of all the trees he moves, 

 and, so daring has he grown, that he no longer root-prunes a tree 

 before lifting it, nor hesitates to transfer a horse chestnut in full 

 bloom from one part of his estate to another. When he already 

 owns the trees, he estimates that it costs him twenty dollars apiece 

 to move specimens for which a nursery that grew them would be 

 obliged to charge several hundred dollars. Tree bargains may 

 be picked up from neighbouring farms if a moving apparatus can 

 be hired. Willows and poplars adapt themselves to new environ 

 ment with alacrity, maples quite readily, oaks less willingly and 

 beeches and white birches sulkily unless transplanted in youth. 

 Owing to the enormous weight of the balls of earth that must be 

 lifted with evergreens, it is not possible to move such large speci 

 mens as may be safely attempted among deciduous trees from 

 whose roots the soil may be shaken out. Even for them, however, 

 it is better to lift part of the ball of soil if possible. 



