THE planter's GUIDE. 



79 



season, a few of the best-rooted survived the operation, 

 and carried leaf well. Their tops were pretty severely 

 lopped, or lightened with the axe, in the ordinary manner ; 

 and I was flattered with some prospect that they would 

 ere long shoot forth with vigour. In a year or two they 

 became stunted and unhealthy, from causes now obvious, 

 but which were unknown to me at the time. The re- 

 maining branches gradually dropped ofi*. They were 

 unable, even with the help of props, to resist the winds, 

 and were in the end rooted out as altogether irrecover- 

 able. 



Having discovered that subjects of quite a different 

 sort must be resorted to, my next trials were made on 

 trees standing in open glades, in grove-wood which had 

 been thinned out to wider distances, in hedgerows and 

 the like, where the sun and air had freer admission. The 

 trees, in general, here exceeded twenty feet in height, 

 their stems were stouter than those used in my first 

 experiments. Their bark had none of the fine and glossy 

 surface belonging to that of the others. Their heads 

 were beginning to assume a more spreading form, and 

 were tolerably well balanced. The roots in some were 

 numerous, but in others scraggy and straggling, according 

 to the nature of their previous rooting-ground, and the 

 degree of exposure in which they had stood. 



The plants from the hedgerows, of course, exceeded all 

 the others in the possession of those properties which I 

 began to suspect were most essential ; and they would 

 have been the best subjects of any, had not their roots 

 grown in a perpendicular direction, in consequence of the 

 high mound of earth on which the hedge was planted. 

 But the tops of the whole I now resolved to leave entire 

 and untouched, notwithstanding the universality of the 



