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SECTION IV. 



DEVELOPMENT AND ILLUSTRATION OF THE NEW THEORY 

 OR PRINCIPLE. 



In the foregoing Section, the principle or theory suggested 

 for an improved practice in transplanting, has been considered 

 as a new principle. But it does not follow from thence, that 

 I either believe, or would persuade others, that I have rnade 

 many new discoveries in phytological science. I have, on 

 this occasion, merely deduced practice from speculation, and 

 conclusions that are probably new, from facts, which others 

 as well as myself must have long since observed. 



Simple and obvious as the principle seems to be, if it have 

 ever occurred to, or been acted on by others, the fact has not 

 come to my knowledge. Of the general practice of this 

 country I may speak with some certainty. I have both seen 

 and heard a good deal of that of our English neighbours. 

 1 have made considerable inquiries respecting the practice of 

 France, Germany, and the north of Europe ; from all which 

 it appears, that planters have not sufficiently attended to 

 vegetable physiology, or to what the law of nature is, in 

 respect to the effects of shelter and exposure on the growth 

 of Wood. In one and all of these countries, trees are at once 

 transferred from close woods or plantations to the open field, 

 and full-grown or large subjects are, like young plants, more 

 or less lopped and defaced, under the name of lightening the 

 lops, at the time of removal. These things, together with 

 the ill success almost always attendant on the conunon 



