TRANSPLANTING LARGE TREES. 35 



against the prevailing winds. At first the trees bade 

 fair to thrive, produced broad healthy leaves the first 

 season, and in some cases small shoots ; gradually, 

 however, signs of sickness appeared, the leaves by 

 degrees became smaller, and early in the season 

 assumed a rusty appearance, and became autumn- 

 tinged in August. At the end of autumn, some of 

 them had died down to within two feet of the ground ; 

 and when last we saw them, the whole, with only a 

 few exceptions, might be regarded as a failure. The 

 exceptional trees were planted upon deep rich loam, 

 mixed with road scrapings. From the general appear- 

 ance of the whole trees, the writer was led to believe 

 that the chief and only cause of failure was poverty 

 and coldness of the soil. That the trees grew well at 

 first, was mainly consequent on the sprinkling of good 

 earth borrowed from the fields, which, when once the 

 roots had gone through or exhausted, they languished 

 and ultimately died. The manner in which the 

 failure was produced may be further accounted for 

 from the circumstance that the trees, when in the 

 nursery, were grown upon very good loam, and in 

 a sheltered situation. 



Altogether, it might have been feared that the change 

 to the trees must have been unfavourable, but it could 

 scarcely have been predicted that so many of them 

 would have perished. 



Throughout the same district other planting was 

 performed about the same time as the above. In 

 corners of fields we planted small groups of trees, 

 composed of oak 8 feet high, spruce 3 feet high, and 

 black Italian poplar from 5 to 6 feet high. Twenty- 

 five years afterwards the oaks were only a few feet 

 higher than when planted ; the spruces were about 



