18 



THE planter's GUIDE. 



Augustus and Tiberius, speaks of Elms twenty feet high, in 

 the neighbourhood of Rome, being commonly removed into 

 the vineyard for the training of vines. They were planted, 

 he says, in a trench called Novenarius — -because they 

 stood in it nine feet every way from one another ; which 

 trench was three feet deep and as many broad, or more, 

 with a bank of earth raised round the stem, like the seats 

 used by the peasants in Campania : a judicious contrivance 

 both for supporting the tree, and protecting it from the 

 effects of drought, during the first season after removal. 

 Witch Hazels, he also adds, were transferred in tlie same 

 manner, and indiscriminately from the nursery ground 

 and from the open forest.'"' 



The same writer, as well as Theophrastus, mentions 

 that it was a common practice to re-establish large trees, 

 and particularly the Plat anus, that had been blown down, 

 and had their roots torn up by the violence of the wind ; 

 and that this was effected by skilfully replanting them, so 

 as that the lacerated parts completely knit again and re- 

 vived.f Moreover, Pliny speaks of a Fir-tree which, 

 before it was transplanted, had a tap-root no less than 

 eight cubits long, that is, reckoning from the place at 

 which it was broken off in the taking up, but that a con- 

 siderable part of it still remained in the ground. This 

 extraordinary circumstance respecting the Fir he seems to 

 have taken from Theophrastus, who states it as a fact 

 known in his time respecting the Pitch Pine, and entitled 

 to credit.;]; 



Cato, Varro, and Columella all speak of the transplan- 

 tation of trees of various sizes. The younger Seneca in- 

 forms us in one of his letters, written from the villa of 

 Scipio Africanus, but then belonging to an intelligent 



* Note IV. f Hist. Nat. lib. xvi. 31. Theophrast. Hist. Plant, lib. iv. 19. 

 X Hist. Plant, lib. ii. 7. 



