63 



This, without doubt, was a singular example of successful 

 transplantation, and not less singular, than certain and well 

 attested. It was a splendid display of the effects of physical 

 strength, and mechanical ingenuity, judiciously directed by 

 absolute power ; but it is useless as an example of either 

 instruction or imitation. If we impartially subduct from it 

 all that may fairly be attributed to a tropical climate, to the 

 unlimited command of men and money in executing the 

 work, and to the glowing colours of the historian in describing 

 it, perhaps there will remain little more than what is both 

 probable and natural, under ordmary circumstances. — 

 Barlaeus, beyond his general eulogium on the great ingenuity, 

 gives no account of the details of the process. Indeed, he 

 does not appear to have been very conversant with the 

 subject of wood, from the wonder which he expresses, at the 

 natural appearance of fruit, in the first season ; as any gar- 

 dener could have predicted the probability of the phenomenon, 

 during the first year, together with the certainty of its ceasing, 

 during the second. 



Evelyn, although with no great accuracy, narrates the 

 same story of Count Maurice, and adds, that instances of the 

 practice, little less successful, had occurred in Europe. He 

 states, that, about the middle of the same century, M. de Fiat, 

 a Mareschal of France, removed huge oaks in this way, at 

 the Chateau de Fiat.* The Elector Palatine, about the 

 same time, also transplanted a number of great lime trees, 

 from one of his forests near Heidelberg, to the slope of a hill, 

 in view of the palace. Midsummer, it seems, was the singular 

 time selected for the work, and De Son, a Frenchman, and 

 " an admirable mechanician," as Evelyn records it, managed 

 the execution. The soil of the hill (according to De Son's 

 account given to Evelyn himself,) consisted of " a dry, 

 reddish, barren earth," which probably with us might have 



*Silva, Vol. I, p. 102. 



