THE ART OF TRANSPLANTING TREES. 345 



elaborates and prepares this food. You can, therefore, no more 

 make a violent attack upon the roots, without the leaves and 

 branches suffering harm by it, than you can greatly injure the 

 stomach of an animal without disturbing the vital action of all the 

 rest of its system. 



In trees and plants, perhaps, this proportional dependence is 

 still greater. For instance, the leaves, and even the bark of a tree, 

 continually act as the perspiratory system of that tree. Every clear 

 day, in a good sized tree, they give off many pounds weight of 

 fluid matter, being the more wateiy portion of the element ab- 

 sorbed by the roots. Now it is plain, that if you destroy, in trans- 

 planting, one-third of the roots of a tree, you have, as soon as the 

 leaves expand, a third more lungs than you can keep in action. The 

 perspiration is vastly beyond what the roots can make good ; and 

 unless the subject is one of unusual vitality, or the weather is such 

 as to keep down perspiration by constant dampness, the leaves must 

 flag, and the tree partly or wholly perish. 



The remedy, in cases where you must plant a tree whose roots 

 have been mutilated, is (after carefully paring off the ends of the 

 wounded roots, to enable them to heal more speedily) to restore the 

 " balance of power " by bringing down the perspiratory system in 

 other words, the branches, to a corresponding state ; that is to say, 

 in theory, if your tree has lost a fourth of its roots, take off an 

 equal amount of its branches. 



This is the correct theory. The practice, however, differs with 

 the climate where the transplanting takes place. This is evident, if 

 we remember that the perspiration is governed by the amount of sun- 

 shine and dry air. The more of these, the greater the demand 

 made for moisture, on the roots. Hence, the reason why delicate 

 cuttings strike root readily under a bell glass, and why transplanting 

 is as easy as sleeping in rainy weather. In England, therefore, it is 

 much easier to transplant large trees than on the continent, or in 

 this country ; so easy, that Sir Henry Stewart made parks of fifty 

 feet trees with his transplanting machine, almost as easily and as 

 quickly as Capt. Bragg makes a park of artillery. But he who 

 tries this sort of fancy work in the bright sunshine of the United 

 States, will find that it is like undertaking to besiege Gibraltar with 



