Age, Size, Roots. 



56. In such cases, the trees are, according to a fashion 

 long in use, taken up when from twelve to eighteen feet 

 high, and when as big round at the bottom as the wrist of 

 a man six feet high, 1 am, at present, speaking of oaks 

 only. The planter selects straight young oaks, which have 

 come up from seed, in the woods, where they stand too thick: 

 and here is a fatal error to begin with. This excess of plants 

 would be a very good reason for cutting the superfluous 

 trees down, and making poles, stakes, or even faggots with 

 them ; but, the very worst reason in the world for choosing 

 theni as plants. If you mean for any plants, even those of 

 the cabbage, to be tit for transplanting, never let them 

 stand thick in the seed-bed, or on any spot to which you 

 have removed them from the seed-bed. The grounds of 

 this precept are knov/n to every man and every woman, 

 who has a garden and a porridge-pot. By remaining in 

 this crowded state, all plants, of every description, become 

 weak in the stem, or stalk, and top-heavy. They are said 

 to draiv each other up; that is to say, they must, if they 

 grow at all, push upwards. While standing thus crowded, 

 they hold one another up; but, if you thin them very 

 mvich, all at once, those that remain will lop, and indeed, 

 their heads will, when the leaves are on, frequently bend 

 down nearly* to the ground; proofs enough of which you 

 will see in any oak wood, which has underwood beneath, 

 and in which young oaks have been left, after the under- 

 w^ood (ten or twelve years old) has been cut dovi^n. The 

 young oaks grow up like the shoots of the underwood : it 

 is right that the underwood should be crowded : it is not to 

 produce jp/aji/c and beams: it is to produce poles and stakes 

 and broom and hoe-handles and hoops and rods. 



57. Besides this drawing up, and its consequent weak- 

 ness, there is the cold to be guarded against. The oak 



