THE planter's GUIDE. 



67 



order to aflford the blast a shorter lever against the roots. 

 But with trees in an open situation, all this is widely 

 different. There they are freely exposed to the wind, 

 and the large expansion of their branches gives every 

 advantage to the violence of the storm. Nature, accor- 

 dingly, bestows greater proportional thickness, and less 

 proportional elevation, on trees which are isolated, or 

 nearly so ; while their system of root, which by necessity 

 is correlatively proportional to their system of top, affords 

 likewise heavier ballast and a stronger anchorage, in 

 order to counteract the greater spread of sail displayed 

 in the wider expansion of the branches. 



Every individual tree is thus a beautiful system of 

 quahties, specially relative to the place which it holds in 

 creation — of provisions admirably accommodated to the 

 peculiar circumstances of its case. Here everything is 

 necessary, nothing is redundant. In the words of a 

 great philosopher, who was an accurate observer of nature, 

 " Where the necessity is obviated, the remedy by con- 

 sequence is withdrawn.^'* If these facts and reasonings 

 be correctly stated, the only rational theory of the removal 

 of large trees consists in prospectively maintaining the 

 same harmony, between the existing provisions of the 

 tree and the exigencies of its new situation, as had pre- 

 viously subsisted between its relative properties and the 

 circumstances of its former site. That such is the only 

 rule, founded on the principles of vegetation, that can 

 apply to aU circumstances and all situations, there cannot 

 be a doubt. But lest the foregoing reasonings should 

 seem rather abstract and general, I will, in order to 

 reduce theory to practice, attempt a more popular detail, 

 and descend from the remoter to the more proximate 



* Note VI. 



