THE planter's GUIDE. 



119 



to a certainty to paralyse their energies, and check the 

 development of their parts. 



The intelligent reader, I have no doubt, will be pleased 

 to find how clear and full an illustration of this doctrine 

 was afforded by the close plantations of the gentleman 

 just now mentioned. It so happened, when he planted 

 the open and exposed parts of his park with small trees 

 from the nursery-ground, as already stated, that at the 

 same time, and with a part of the same plants, he exe- 

 cuted a considerable stretch of the adjoining plantations. 

 When I examined the latter, the trees were, for the most 

 part, about thirty and five-and-thirty feet high, and in a 

 state of the most perfect health. They had been drawn 

 up and protected in the warm and kindly atmosphere 

 generated by close woods. The outside rows had acquired 

 to a certain degree the protecting properties, and were 

 nearly fit for removal ; and the whole exhibited a striking 

 contrast to the diminutive and stunted plants in the 

 adjoining park, many of which, instead of five-and-thirty 

 feet, had not grown above as many inches from the 

 time they were set out ! 



It is indubitable that one and all of these radical 

 errors in practice, into which planters fall, originate 

 mainly in a want of science to regulate it, and of a com- 

 petent knowledge of the history and properties of woody 

 plants. General planting, as well as every particular 

 department of the art, as has been already noticed, must 

 depend for its success on scientific principles. Since the 

 first pubKcation of this essay, it is pleasing to perceive 

 some symptoms of the public attention being roused to 

 physiological inquiry on this subject. But nothing less 

 than an institution for the encouragement of arboriculture 

 exclusively, will supply this desideratum in the education 

 and intelligence of the country, and place the art on that 



