GrUicJcslidnF s Practical Planter. 457 



the expense ; and, secondly, to transgress against that fundamental rule in 

 arboriculture, namely, that young trees should be brought up in the nursery 

 as hardy as possible. To force earth will be found, in general, equivalent 

 to forcing the plants 5 for the advocates of the practice always mean to 

 enrich, not to reduce, the soil by means of it." (p. 33.) 



The whole of this is a piece of gross misrepresentation. In a 

 chapter devoted to " the formation of a nursery-garden for 

 the propagation and rearing of trees and shrubs," we treat of 

 a complete nursery, a private nursery, and public nurseries. " In 

 order to have a complete nursery," we have stated, taking 

 Sang for our guide, that it " should contain soils of various 

 qualities, and be not less than 18 in. or 2 ft. deep; the gene- 

 rality of it should be light, friable earth ; a part of it should 

 be of a clayey nature ; and another part should be mossy." 

 When it is considered that, in a complete nursery, American 

 shrubs, which require peat, bulbs, which require a dry, and 

 fruit trees, which require a loamy, soil, are to be raised, it will 

 not be denied, by any practical man, that the above three 

 descriptions of soil are essential. They are, in fact, to be 

 found in all the principal London and Edinburgh nurseries. 

 For a private nursery, we have recommended "afield," "land 

 of a good quality and fine tilth, for the raising of seedlings ; " 

 in short, much the same sort of nursery-ground that Mr. 

 Cruickshank recommends. Speaking of public nurseries, we 

 have said nothing about different soils, but recommended 

 cropping the ground in the double character of a kitchen- 

 garden and nursery. The word forcing, or any word or 

 words on which that interpretation could be put, we have 

 never used. The writer has conjured up this " forcing of 

 earth " in his imagination, and then attacked it in detail. A 

 reviewer of the work, in t\\e Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, 

 seizes on this " forcing system of the nursery," as he calls it, 

 as a feature of English practice, and condemns it as " erro- 

 neous in principle, injurious in practice, and the cause of 

 numerous failures in forest culture." This is part of the art 

 of editing and reviewing, when the parties are either ignorant 

 of the subject, or entertain some prejudicial feeling connected 

 with it. It is clear to us, that neither Cruickshank nor his 

 reviewer knows much of nursery-gardening, as practised either 

 in the principal nurseries of England or Scotland. 



At the conclusion of the introductory remarks, in which the 

 above misrepresentations are included, the author informs us 

 that " he conceived it to be the duty of every one who under- 

 takes to write on a practical subject, to point out the errors 

 of his predecessors, in so far as he has experience on his 

 side." This is laudable : but, first, totally to misrepresent a 



