SECTION II. 



387 



Birch, and tlie Walnut, appeared by no means so successful, although 

 powerfully supported with cordage, as described in the text ; but they 

 were placed in more exposed situations, and seemed less in possession of 

 the protecting properties. This conjecture was confirmed to me by the 

 intelligent Mr Macnab, who stated, among other things, that in the 

 tallest of these trees, which were from seven-and -thirty to three- and-forty 

 feet high, the roots did not exceed three and a half or four feet in 

 length; a style of roots, as I observed to him, wholly inadequate to 

 nourish or support plants of a far smaller size. For the reasons, there- 

 fore, given in Section V. page 120 of the present work, the ingenious 

 Professor must wait with patience, " until the deficiency in these pro- 

 perties be made up." But I wish distinctly to repeat what is men- 

 tioned in the text, that I consider Dr Graham as beyond comparison 

 the ablesty the most ingenious, and the most successful horticultural trans- 

 planter in Britain, or perhaps in Europe ; and I am certain that he 

 would render an important service to all others who may be placed in 

 similar circumstances, were he to publish an account of the particular 

 process which he followed on this interesting occasion. 



It will, however, immediately occur to every reflecting planter, that, 

 for the causes assigned in the text, and particularly at page 49, 



HORTICULTURAL TRANSPLANTING and TRANSPLANTING IN THE PARK, are pro- 



cesses extremelt/ different from each other, as different as hothouse cul- 

 ture is from the culture of husbandry in the open field. Had I thought 

 it worth while, I might have stated in the text, and stated with perfect 

 truth, that the forest-trees in the Botanic Garden of Edinburgh could 

 not have stood four-and-twenty hours in the park here, particularly 

 about the equinox ; and that the style of success, attending them where 

 they do stand, seems to show, that, up to the beginning of the present 

 year (1828,) when the first edition of my Treatise came out, nothing was 

 known of the principles on which parh-wood should be removed, even 

 by persons the most able and scientific. And I trust it will not now 

 be thought invidious, when I add, that trees planted at the same time 

 as those in the botanic garden, in the most exposed situations of my park, 

 are seen to make shoots between two and three feet long, and that they 

 never had props or supports of any species. 



The truth is, that horticultural planting and park planting being so 

 very dissimilar, as just now^ observed, (owing to the widely dissimilar 

 circumstances under which they are executed,) they never can come 

 into comparison, far less into competition with each other. Modern 

 botanists have thought good to divide themselves into two classes — 

 namely, the systematic and the physiological — but under which of the 

 two the ingenious Professor ranks himself is not known to me, although 



