SECTION IV. 



415 



great reason to think, that the thick clothing of leaves and branches 

 thus provided for the tops of trees, and for their exposed sides, is of 

 great importance to their health and preservation." — Page 56. 



Note VII. Page 102. 



I have now practised this method for so many years, that it comes to 

 he pretty generally known in different districts of the kingdom. In 

 Perthshire, Forfarshire, Berwickshire especially, I have found it pretty 

 prevalent, chiefly through the communications of my worthy friend Mr 

 Thomas White, the celebrated landscape-gardener, and his father of the 

 same name ; and in other districts, as I am informed, it is familiar to 

 planters, who are utterly ignorant of the source from whence it 

 originated. On inquiring lately of a Perthshire gentlemen, what benefit 

 he promised himself from the practice of reversing the position of his 

 trees on removal — he candidly replied, " that he knew no benefit at 

 all that could be derived from it ; but, understanding that it was the 

 fashion of the day, he followed it implicitly, as he followed other fashions, 

 without thinking it necessary to inquire about the matter." Now this 

 gentleman is a person of large property, and an extensive planter, 

 which sufficiently shows tJie state of our general intelligence on the subject 

 of wood, and how important it is, if fashion must regulate the business, 

 that the fashion should be founded on some principles of science. 



Some little time since, I was applied to for advice, by a gentleman 

 whose place lies on the west coast, and whose park descends in a gradual 

 slope to the margin of the Atlantic. In this situation his trees are 

 severely exposed to the western and south-western gales, which, though 

 mitigated in some sort by the screen of Ireland, occasion his single and 

 detached trees to lean in a remarkable manner to the east and north- 

 east, and become objects of deformity rather than beauty. This, he 

 said, was the case with the whole of them that had not been thinned out 

 from old grove-wood, and which for a considerable time had had the 

 benefit of shelter. 



I advised him, in all prominent or favourite situations, in the vicinity 

 of the mansion-house, of approaches, or the like, (where the trees were 

 otherwise of fine figure, and of no very great size — that is, not exceed- 

 ing from six to eight feet in girth,) to loosen them in the ground, as if 

 for removal, according to the method practised here ; raising the ball 

 or mass of earth round the stem, and with it the turf unbroken, nine 

 feet out from the stem at the least ; and endeavouring, beyond that 

 distance, for seven or eight feet more, (according to circumstances,) to 

 preserve the whole of the roots, if possible, and especially the minute 



