TRANSPLANTING DKYROT. 25 



face slightly firm with the foot; and lastly, stake 

 and tie every plant. Make this last a rule without 

 any exception. You are apt to say when it is 

 calm that the wind will do no harm; but wait the 

 equinox, and you will see an exactly conical per- 

 foration, smoothly plastered around the neck of 

 every unfastened plant. For the sake of variety, 

 other sorts of your large and well nursed ever- 



disease that may be supposed, from its name, to originate in dry- 

 ness. It is only by comparison that the term has any truth. 

 The cause of rotting is more obvious in wood that is laid on wet 

 grass ; and then it seems myterious that a waste as rapid should 

 be found in that which is so dry as the floor and panels of a fre- 

 quented parlour. These are indeed dry as compared with boards 

 laid on the grass ; but where the rot occurs in the panels, they 

 are in reality not dry. Mushrooms oflarge dimensions, or plants 

 of another species, will be found gi owing inside, and seeking their 

 way to the light. Such tribes do not live without water: roast 

 them, and the falling drops will prove the fact: neither are those 

 deals so clothed with vegetable life that are always near the fire. 

 It would seem, therefore, that the above misnomer should be 

 amended by substituting the word wet for dry: and it may be 

 observed, too, that the wetness which causes it is just in the most 

 favourable circumstances for aiding the disease in its hidden and 

 appalling devastations. The moisture is closed in, and excluded 

 from the air. Were the circulation free, a dryer atmosphere 

 would sometimes, at least, check the decomposition of the tim- 

 ber, and the progeny of its corruption being, though mischievous, 

 naturally delicate, might suifer by the changes of temperature. 

 Wherefore if dryness of site and freeness of circulation cannot be 

 provided for in the case of a house so infected, let not the inmate 

 breathe his wrath upon the mushroom itself not the cause but 

 the effect of the dangerous damp of which it gives a friendly ad- 

 monition; and let him seek no oil or mineral poison to prevent 

 in future the wood which he repairs from giving the like indica- 

 tions of harm: but let him rather flee for his life, lest staying t 

 unwarned he may be found to have slain the witness, not the foe 

 and made himself a prey. 



