282 APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES. 



direcUy, as will be shown hereafter. The season, 

 then, which ought to be chosen is the period that 

 intervenes between the fall of the leaf in autumn and 

 the earliest part of spring, before the sap begins 

 to move and the dry cold winds of that season to pre 

 vail. I entirely agree with Mr. Macnab, that the 

 earliest time at which planting can be effected is, 

 upon the whole, the best ; a conclusion to which he 

 has come from his extensive practice, in which my 

 own observation of a great deal of planting for the 

 last twenty-five years coincides, and which is, in all 

 respects, conformable to theory. As soon as a plant 

 has shed its leaves, it is as much at rest for the season 

 as it will be at any subsequent period, unless it is 

 frozen ; its torpor, indeed, is greater at that time, 

 because its excitability is completely exhausted by 

 the season of growth, and it has had no time to reco- 

 ver it. If, at that time, a root is wounded, a process 

 of granulation or cicatrisation will commence, just as 

 it does in cuttings (page 200) ; and from that granu- 

 lation, which is a mere developement of the horizon- 

 tal cellular system (45), roots will eventually proceed. 

 Now, it is obvious that since roots must be wounded 

 in the process of transplantation, the sooner the wound 

 is made the better, because it has the longer time in 

 which to heal ; and therefore the earlier in the autumn 

 transplanting is effected, the less injury will be sus- 

 tained by the plant submitted to the process ; in the 

 technical language of the gardener, " it has the more 

 time to establish itself." 

 Autumn and mid-winter are, moreover, the best 



