THE planter's GUIDE. 



131 



of our situation, which naturally tends to the equalisation 

 of climates, little park timber is found in Scotland, or the 

 north of England, approaching in size and grandeur to 

 the great trees in the midland and southern counties, 

 owing probably to the superior soil which exists in the 

 latter districts. Of these the Swilcar, Shelton, Ohandos, 

 and Fredville Oaks, the Tortworth, Burleigh, and Cobham 

 Chestnuts, the Chipstead and Tutbury Elms, the A¥oburn 

 Ash, the Knowle Beech, and the Cobham Lime and 

 Sycamore are eminent examples, as may be seen in Mr 

 Sturt's late elegant dehneations."'" A more powerful 

 delineator than Sturt says, of the King's Oak at Blen- 

 heim, that " although scathed and gnarled in its branches, 

 the immense trunk still showed to what gigantic size the 

 monarch of the forest can attain in the groves of merry 

 England.''! As it appears plain, from these and other 

 instances, both in the north and south, that the size of 

 wood will be mainly in proportion to the depth of the 

 soil on which it grows, it should be the chief study of the 

 planter to promote that capital object. It is a sound 

 maxim, as old as Theophrastus, and repeated by Columella 

 and Pliny, as familiar to the Roman husbandman, to 

 transfer no tree to a worse soil than that in which it had 

 previously stood ;| and whatever in this respect holds 

 true of young plants, must d fortiori hold more decidedly 

 true of large subjects, such as are intended for removal. 

 If in transplanting we must often increase the cold, and 

 other circumstances adverse to trees, it becomes us the 

 more diligently to study that the soil be rendered as rich 



* See Sturt's elegant Portraits of British Forest TreeS; with respectable 

 letterpress description. Lond. 1826. 



t Sir Walter Scott, Woodstock, vol. i. p. 68. 

 X Note II. 



