General Instructions. 



if the ground be wet. When you have laid the trees along 

 this little bank^ you cover the roots by digginsf another spit 

 or two of ground, and thereby making a second little bank, 

 for another joarcel of the trees, to be laid along in the same 

 manner. A third little bank is made in the same way; 

 and thus you go on until you have got the whole of your 

 plants laid by the heels, in which state they will remain in 

 perfect safety, if it should be necessary, from the month of 

 October until the month of iVpril. There are many advan- 

 tages attending this mode of proceeding : you can sort your 

 trees before you begin to plant ; you can count them ; you 

 •can lay them in by tens, by hundreds, or by thousands ; you 

 sec what you have got; they are always ready, when you 

 are ready for the work of planting : whereas, if you leave 

 them in the nursery till the very moment you want them to 

 plant out into plantations, you have two great works to do 

 at one and the same time ; you do not know what number 

 you have ; and there are all sorts of uncertainties and delays. 



71. The next thing is to give directions for the pruning 

 of the roots ; and, as this is a work absolutely necessary to 

 be performed, and of very great importance, I shall endea- 

 vour to make my instructions on this head as plain as pos- 

 sible. I spoke before, in paragraph 54, about pruning the 

 roots of some trees, and observed, that roots are distin- 

 guished, some by the name of roots, and others by the 

 name of fibres. The fibres of trees, when once taken out 

 of the ground, never grow again, but the tree, if planted 

 with the fibres left on the roots, very often receives great 

 injury from the moulding of the fibres. The fibres, there- 

 fore, should be all taken out clean with a sharp knife. This 

 is a work of great trouble, and may be dispensed with in 

 Forest trees in general, but it were bettei- if it were per- 

 formed as to all trees. The roots are more substantial 



