REMOVING AND TRANSPLANTING TREES. 93 



will be able to draw the plough through the heavy and solid 

 earth. If no gauge-wheel is employed, the plough will often 

 plunge in so deep that the team can not pull it through. 

 Excavations can be made with plough and scraper two feet 

 deep in a very economical manner, when one has a good 

 team. After the earth has been removed to the desired 

 depth, let it be returned with the scraper, until the depres- 

 sions are sufficiently full to receive the trees. Then set up 

 a stake where the tree is to be planted, and proceed to ex- 

 cavate for another tree. 



We once tested this mode of preparing holes for fruit- 

 trees, and found that a man and boy, with a span of horses, 

 could excavate a hollow about two feet deep, and return the 

 earth in about one hour per hole. But it paid well in the 

 growth of the trees. 



Setting Trees on the Surface of the Ground. As has 

 previously been stated, there is danger of planting trees too 

 deep, as many of the roots strike downward into the earth, 

 as naturally as the tops stretch upward into the air, when 

 there is not some impenetrable obstruction to hinder their 

 ramification through the soil. None except the annual feed- 

 ers near the surface of the ground are found to tend upward, 

 as they push out from a main root, or branch of a root. In 

 case a tree is planted too deep, a new system of roots will 

 be thrown out from the stem, one or two inches beneath 

 the surface of the soil. No matter how deeply tap-roots 

 and branch-roots may be sent downward, it is a habit of 

 fruit-trees to produce a complete system of roots, rootlets, 

 fibres, and feeders so near the surface of the earth, that the 

 countless number of minute mouths may imbibe the moist- 

 ure and plant-food soon after the small particles begin to 

 descend from the surface. 



A knowledge of these facts once warranted an experi- 

 ment in planting trees directly on the surface of the ground. 



