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THE planter's GUIDE. 



rate distance, would do well to procure them from Thomas 

 Nesbit, carpenter near this place, a very ingenious man, 

 who has been much in the habit of making them for some 

 years. 



It appears hitherto to have been the opinion of the 

 constructors of transplanting machines, that their value in 

 a great measm^e lies in the weight of wood and iron they 

 contain. My conception of it, on the other hand, is pre- 

 cisely the reverse ; as I believe that the smaller the 

 quantity of those materials, the greater the utility of the 

 implement. If it be true that the greatest success and 

 the greatest despatch united form the character of the 

 most perfect transplanting-work, it follows that heavy 

 implements of this sort, unless for work of uncommon 

 magnitude, are doubly inexpedient : first, on account of the 

 expense which they cost in the beginning ; and secondly, 

 on account of the still greater expense which it ere long 

 costs to use them — for time needlessly lost is money im- 

 providently thrown away. Better that a machine should 

 break down twice in your life, from being somewhat 

 too light for its work, than that it should cost you three 

 times its price in labour, in dragging a superfluous load of 

 wood and iron about your park ; for thus there would be 

 a loss of both time and money. This, however, is a style 

 of estimate which only practical persons will understand, 

 and only economists of time will duly appreciate. If a 

 man remove only three trees in a twelvemonth, it signifies 

 little what sort of machine he happens to use ; but if he 

 remove sixty or a hundred trees, twenty or thirty times 

 the cost makes a great figure in the calculation. Now, 

 supposing that he executed but a third part of the work 

 last mentioned, I am satisfied that there would be economy 

 in having two machines, calculated to the scale of his 

 work : the machine for the lesser trees being light, and 



