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considerable scale, and with extraordinary success ; but 1 

 have not been able to obtain any detail of the process. 



About three years since, Dr. Robert Graham, Professor of 

 Botany in the University of Edinburgh, on changing the 

 site of tlie botanical garden at that place, contrived to remove 

 a vast number of plants of great rarity and value, and which, 

 had they been lost, many years of the most diligent culture 

 in the ordinary manner would not have replaced. Previ- 

 ously to the taking up, he followed the ingenious method of 

 Lord Fitzharding, in cutting round the plants, which, pro- 

 perly speaking, should all have stood for two or three years 

 after, in order to gain an accession to their roots : but, some 

 local arrangements having deprived them of that advantage, 

 a great part were suflered to stand only for a single season. 

 Such, notwithstanding, was the extraordinary care bestowed 

 upon them l)y the ingenious professor, and the skill and 

 diligence of his gardener Mr. M'Nab, that the removals were 

 executed with a safety, which could scarcely have been anti- 

 cipated. In order to give still greater variety and effect to 

 the new garden, forest trees also of various kinds, and con- 

 siderable dimensions, some of them from thirty to forty feet 

 high, were at the same time transferred from the old ground 

 to the new. 



The method adopted was, to raise as great a mass or ball 

 of earth as possible with the plants, and that was carefully 

 matted up, in order to preserve it entire. The plants were 

 then put upon a platform with four very low wheels, in an 

 upright position (as was practised in the time of Evelyn,) 

 and transported about a mile and a half to the new garden. 

 In removing the trees, owing to the immense friction, occa- 

 sioned by the lowness of the w^heels, ten and twelve horses 

 were occasionally employed ; so that the procession through 

 the suburbs for many days, consisting of men, and horses, 

 and waving boughs, presented a spectacle that was at once 

 novel and imposing. The citizens of Edinburgh were sur- 



