APPENDIX. 
445 
moval of a forest tree, as ordinarily performed by many persons, would 
scarcely suppose that any thing beyond mere physical strength was re- 
quired. Commencing as near the tree as possible, cutting off many of 
the roots, with the very smallest degree of reluctance, wrenching the 
remaining mass out of their bed as speedily and almost as roughly as 
possible, the operator hastens to complete his destructive process by 
cutting off the best part of the head of the tree, to make it correspond 
with the reduced state of the roots. Arrived at the hole prepared for its 
reception, his replanting consists in shoveling in, while the tree is held 
upright, the surrounding soil, — paying little or no regard to filling up all 
the small interstices among the roots, — and finally, after treading the 
earth as hard as possible, completing the whole by pouring two or three 
pails of water upon the top of the ground. How any reflecting person, 
who looks upon a plant as a delicately organized individual, can reasona- 
bly expect or hope for success after such treatment in transplanting, is 
what we never could fully understand ! And it has always, therefore, 
appeared pretty evident, that all such operators must have very crude 
and imperfect notions of vegetable physiology, or the structure and 
functions of plants. 
The first and most important consideration in transplanting should be 
the preservation of the roots. By this we do not mean a certain bulk of 
the larger and more important ones only, but as far as possible all the 
numerous small fibres and rootlets so indispensably necessary in assist- 
ing the tree to recover from the shock of removal. The coarser and 
larger roots serve to secure the tree in its position and convey the fluids, 
but it is by means of the small fibrous roots, or the delicate and nume- 
rous points of these fibres called spongioles, that the food of plants is 
imbibed, and the destruction of such is, manifestly, in the highest de- 
gree fatal to the success of the transplanted tree. To avoid this as far as 
practicable, we should, in removing a tree, commence at such a distance 
as to include a circumference large enough to comprise the great majori- 
ty of the roots. At that distance from the trunk we shall find most of 
the smaller roots, which should be carefully loosened from the soil, with 
as little injury as possible ; the earth should be gently and gradually 
removed from the larger roots, as we proceed onward from the extremity 
of the circle to the centre, and when we reach the nucleus of roots sur- 
rounding the trunk, and fairly undermine the whole, we shall find our- 
