76 



THE planter's GUJDE. 



true principles of general planting, and must equally 

 govern every attempt at successful arboriculture ; I mean 

 the anatomy of plants, and the modifying of heat and 

 cold to their various conditions and circumstances. It is 

 a radical error to suppose, as is too often done by planters 

 and gardeners, that heat is not as necessary to the infancy 

 of a tender plant as to a newborn and helpless animal ; 

 and that the former is not as ill adapted to resist cold, 

 and an early and undue exposure to the elements, as the 

 latter. The tree, as well as the animal, is an organised 

 being endued with life, although its conditions of exis- 

 tence, internal and external, are differently modified : but 

 the striking analogy subsisting between them should be 

 the guide of the planter's practice, and should never be 

 absent from his mind. It is owing to this utter unacquaint- 

 ance with vegetable physiology which prevails among 

 landowners, that the ill success of too many British 

 plantations is to be attributed, and that wood so seldom 

 thrives or repays the planter. 



Were arboriculture, like husbandry, properly under- 

 stood, and were the important sciences of physiology and 

 chemistry applied, in the former art, to the study of facts, 

 a very different return for the vast sums laid out in plant- 

 ing might certainly be expected. In this case, I do not 

 say that soils and climates could by any means be equal- 

 ised, but their return in wood, like that in crops, would 

 become uniformly productive : trees would be judiciously 

 adapted to their appropriate soils, and, what is little less 

 important, to their appropriate climates. The efforts of 

 nature would every where be seconded, instead of being 

 repressed or counteracted. An ef&cient management 

 would supersede a fortuitous practice ; and, in a word, 

 science would be able to anticipate the result, which 

 industry, without her assistance, could never bring about. 



