100 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



district of Morven,) we have met with very Iarn;e 

 trunks, lying' mouldering; and neglected. Indeed, 

 all the evidence that we have been able to collect 

 tends to prove, that the general climate of the north 

 has been deteriorated by the destruction of timber, 

 whether that destruction has been produced by na- 

 tural or by artificial means ; and though farming 

 may do much, it must carry on an extensive warfare 

 against the bleak and blasting wind from the bogs 

 and heaths, unless that be softened and deprived of 

 the pestilent substances which it carries, by passing 

 through forests of trees. 



The transplanting of grown timber is by no means 

 a modern art. Theophrastus, the Greek writer upon 

 rural economy, mentions that the Greeks not only re- 

 planted the plane tree when uprooted by the winds, 

 but were in the habit of removing other large trees. 

 The Romans, too, according to Pliny, transplanted, 

 when they were twenty feet high, the elms which they 

 used in their vineyards, as poles upon which to train 

 their vines. These were planted in regular rows, nine 

 feet asunder. Seneca the younger mentions, that an 

 entire orchard of full-grown trees was removed from 

 one place to another, near the villa of Scipio Afri- 

 caims, and that after a season or two they flourished 

 and bore fruit as well as ever. It appears, however, 

 that in the ancient method of transplanting grown trees, 

 whether by the Greeks or the Romans, it was the 

 practice to cut ofl'all the spray and smaller branches, 

 and even the large ones, to within a foot of the stem. 

 Indeed, from the way in which they cut both the 

 top and the roots, it is evident that though the trunks 

 of the trees were old, the whole of the vegetation was 

 new. 



During the middle ages, this art was neglected, 

 along wth most of the other arts; but it was revived in 

 modern times. Among the early instances of it, one 



