THE planter's GUIDE. 



275 



tiiresqne considerations, was in this way communicated 

 to their residences. 



The fourth person whom I shall specify is Mr James 

 Hamilton, overseer to Sir Charles M. Lockhart of Lee, 

 Bart, in the county of Lanark. That gentleman, who 

 has a fine place in the neighbourhood of the county town 

 of Lanark, is at the head of the ancient family of Lee 

 and Cartland, whose representative in the beginning of 

 the fourteenth century. Sir Simon Lockhart, is said to 

 have carried King Robert Bruce's heart in a golden box 

 from Spain. 



Owing to Sir Charles's residence in another county, 

 during a great part of the years 1826 and 1827, he could 

 not personally attend to the spirited improvements that 

 were carried on at Lee ; he therefore entrusted the man- 

 agement of them to a person every way adequate to the 

 task, namely, his judicious overseer, Mr James Hamilton, 

 who in the spring of the year first mentioned Vr^as sent 

 over to this place, in order to receive some instructions 

 from me in the art of transplanting on the preservative 

 principle. These that intelligent person seemed at once 

 to apprehend, and soon began to apply them to practice. 



In the middle of March of the same year he removed 

 to the open park eleven Oaks and Ashes, of from five-and- 

 twenty to thirty feet high, and in girth from two feet to 

 two and a half. One or two of the Oaks were as high as 

 forty feet, and they had all handsome tops. In April 

 1827 he transferred six or seven trees, and of nearly 

 similar dimensions, and at the average expense, in both 

 years, (according to a statement by himself in my posses- 

 sion,) of somewhat less than eight shillings each. Not- 

 withstanding the severe drought in 1826, it may be con- 

 sidered as a remarkable circumstance that only two died 

 — probably owing to the want of sufficient covering and 



