USE OF THE FEET IN SOWING AND PLANTING. 215 



whose rootlets are even more sensitive to such influence 

 than the dormant seed. 



Experienced professional horticulturists, however, are 

 less likely to neglect this than to neglect in the case 

 of seeds, for the damage from such neglect is easier to be 

 seen, and hence better understood by the practical nur- 

 seryman; but with the inexperienced amateur the case is 

 different. When he receives his package of trees or 

 plants from the nurseryman, he handles them as if they 

 were glass, every broken twig or root calls forth a com- 

 plaint, and he proceeds to plant them, gingerly straighten- 

 ing out each root and sifting the soil around them, but 

 he would no more stamp down that soil than he would 

 stamp on the soil of his mother's grave. So the plant, in 

 nine cases out of ten, is left loose and waggling ; the dry 

 air penetrates through the soil to its roots; the winds 

 shake it; it shrivels up and fails to grow ; and then come 

 the anathemas on the head of the unfortunate nursery- 

 man, who is charged with selling him dead trees or plants. 



About a month ago I sent a package of a dozen Roses 

 by mail to a lady in Savannah. She wrote me a woeful 

 story last week, saying that, though the Roses had ar- 

 rived seemingly all right, they had all died but one, and 

 what was very singular, she said, the one that lived was 

 the one that Mr. Jones had stepped on, and which she 

 had thought sure was crushed to death, for Mr. Jones 

 weighs 200 pounds. Now, though I do not advise any 

 gentleman of 200 pounds putting his brogan on the top 

 of a tender Rose plant, as a practice conducive to its 

 health, yet, if Mrs. Jones could have allowed her weighty 

 lord to press the soil against the root of each of her dozen 

 Roses, I much doubt if she would now have to mourn 

 their loss. 



It has often been a wonder to many of us, who have 



