86 HAND-BOOK OF TREE-PLANTING. 



condition of the soil, then, are first to be taken 

 into account. These are prerequisites to the 

 thrifty growth of a tree, such a growth as every 

 planter wishes to secure. A calf or a colt will 

 live and possibly make some growth on a scanty 

 pasturage in summer or on straw-fodder in win- 

 ter. It will barely live. But no successful 

 stock-raiser, no one worthy to be considered as 

 a stock-raiser, feeds his animals in that way. So 

 a human child will possibly live and maintain 

 a feeble existence upon slop milk or when the 

 diet is defective in quality and insufficient in 

 quantity, though many drop off and die from 

 such causes. 



Now, the soil is the source of the tree's nour- 

 ishment. The roots of the tree are its mouths 

 or, more properly, its mouths are in its roots. 

 What we call the roots are, in part, only a me- 

 chanical contrivance by which the tree is held 

 in an upright position a brace, so to speak. 

 But these underground arms branch off into fin- 

 gers innumerable, which are covered with hairs 

 or rootlets, somewhat as our own fingers are. 

 In these are the mouths of the tree, so small as 

 to be invisible. It is clearly impossible, there- 



