572 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



trenching, digging, or a year's subjection to the plough, it will be found amply to repay 

 the trouble. This is more especially requisite for strips, for shelters or hedge-rows, as the 

 quick growth of the plants in these cases is a matter of the utmost consequence. The 

 general mode of planting hedges by the side of an open drain, renders preparation for 

 them, in many cases, less necessary; but for strips of trees, wherever it is practicable, and there 

 is at the same time no danger of the soil being washed away by rains or thaws, as in some 

 chalky hilly districts ; or blown about by the wind, as in some parts of Norfolk, and other 

 sandy tracts, preparation by a year's fallow, or by trenching two spits deep, cannot be 

 omitted without real loss, by retarding the attainment of the object desired. There are 

 instances stated, of promising oak plantations, from oaks dibbed into soil altogether 

 unimproved, and of plantations of Scotch pine, raised by merely sowing the seeds on a 

 heath or common, and excluding cattle (General Report of Scotland, ii. 269.) ; but these 

 are rare cases, and the time required and the instances of failure are not mentioned. 

 The practice is obviously too rude to be recommended as one of art. The best situations 

 for planting, without any other culture but inserting the seeds or plants, are surfaces par- 

 tially covered with low woody growths, as broom, furze, &c. " The ground which is 

 covered, or rather half covered, with juniper and heath," says Buffon, " is already a wood 

 half made. Osier plantations are an exception to these remarks, as to the value of the 

 situation and soil ; they require a deep, strong, moist soil, but one not springy, or conti- 

 nually saturated with water; and it will be in vain to plant them without draining and 

 trenching it two or more feet deep." 



3645. Whether extensive plantations should be sown or planted, is a question about which 

 planters are at variance. Miller says, transplanted oaks will never arrive at the size of 

 those raised where they are to remain from the acorn. (Diet. Quercvs. ) Marshal pre- 

 fers sowing when the ground can be cultivated with the plough. (Plant, and Rur. Om. i. 

 123.) Evelyn, Emmerich, and Speechly are of the same opinion; Pontey and Nicol 

 practice planting, but offer no arguments against sowing where circumstances are suit- 

 able. Sang says, *' It is an opinion very generally entertained, that planted timber can 

 never, in any case, be equal in durability and value to that which is sown. We certainly 

 feel ourselves inclined to support this opinion, although we readily admit, that the matter 

 has not been so fully established, from experiment, as to amount to positive proof. But 

 although we have not met with decided evidence, to enable us to determine on the com- 

 parative excellence of timber raised from seeds, without being replanted, over such as 

 have been raised from replanted trees, we are left in no doubt as to the preference, in re- 

 spect of growth, of those trees which are sown, over such as are planted." (Plant. KaL 

 43. ) He particularly prefers this mode for raising extensive tracts of the Scotch pine 

 and larch (p. 430.), and is decidedly of opinion, " that every kind of forest tree will suc- 

 ceed better by being reared from seeds in the place where it is to grow to maturity, than by 

 being raised in any nursery whatever, and from thence transplanted into the forest." 



(p. 344.) Dr. Yule ' Caled. Hort. Mem. ii.), in a long paper on trees, strongly recom- 

 mends sowing where the trees are finally to remain. " It is," says he, " a well ascer- 

 tained fact, that seedlings allowed to remain in their original station, will, in a few 

 seasons, far overtop the common nursed plants several years older." 



3646. The opinion of Dr. Yule, and in part also that of Sang, seems to be founded on 

 the idea that the tap-root is of great importance to grown-up trees, and that when this is 

 once cut off by transplanting, the plant has not a power of renewing it. That the tap- 

 root is of the utmost consequence for the first three or four years is obvious from the eco- 

 nomy of nature at that age of the plant; perhaps for a longer period; but that it can be 

 of no great consequence to full-grown trees, appears highly probable from the fact, that 

 when such trees are cut down, the tap-root is seldom to be distinguished from the others. 

 The opinion that young plants have not the power of renewing their tap-root, will, we 

 believe, be found inconsistent with fact ; and we may appeal to Sang and other nursery- 

 men, who raise the oak and horse-chestnut from seed. It is customary when these are 

 sown in drills, to cut off their tap-roots without removing the plants at the end of the 

 second year's growth, and when at the end of the third or fourth year they are taken up, 

 they will be found to have acquired other tap roots, not indeed so strong as the first would 

 have been had they remained, but suflScient to establish the fact of the power of renewal. 

 "We may also refer to the experiment recorded by Forsyth, which at once proves that trees have 

 a power of renewing their tap-roots, and the great advantages from cutting down trees after 

 two or three years' planting. Forsyth " transplanted a bed of oak-plants, cutting the tap- 

 roots near to some of the side-roots or fibres springing from them. In the second year after, 

 he headed one half of the plants down, and left the other half to nature. In the first 

 season, those headed down made shoots six feet long and upwards, and completely covered 

 the head of the old stem, leaving only a faint cicatrix, and produced new tap-roots up- 

 wards of two feet and a half long. That half of the plants that were not headed, were 

 not one fourth the size of the others. One of the former is now eighteen feet high, and 

 iiileen inches in circumference, at six inches from the ground: one of the largest of the 



