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APPENDIX. 
f ng. A little extra labor and cost expended in preparing the soil will, 
for a long time, secure a surprising rapidity of growth.* 
In the actual planting of the tree, the chief point lies in bringing 
jvery small fibre in contact with the soil, so that no hollows or inter- 
stices are left, which may produce mouldiness and decay of the roots. 
To avoid this, the soil must be pulverized with the spade before filling 
in, and one of the workmen, with his hands and a flat dibble of wood, 
should fill up all cavities, and lay out the small roots before covering 
them in their natural position. When watering is thought advisable 
(and we practise it almost invariably), it should always be done while 
the planting is going forward. Poured in the hole when the roots are 
just covered with the soil, it serves to settle the loose earth compactly 
* Where expense is not so much an object as success, we cannot too deeply 
impress upon planters the necessity of making very deep, and very wide holes, 
or pits, as they are called in England. These pits should be four to five feet 
deep, and not less than ten to sixteen feet in diameter, and neither round nor 
square , but star-shaped, or cross-shaped, of such a form as would be produced 
by placing one equilateral triangle upon another, or two parallelograms across 
each other, so as to form a Greek cross. 
The object of departing from the square, or round form, is to introduce the 
growing fibres of the young trees into the firm and poor soil , by degrees , and 
not all at once , as in the round or square-hole manner. 
When a tree is planted in the round or square pit, surrounded outside of it 
by poor, hard soil, it is very much in the same situation as if its rbots were 
confined in a tub or box. 
The dove-tailing, so to speak, of the prepared soil, and of the moisture it 
will retain, with the hard, impenetrable soil by which it is surrounded, will 
gradually prepare the latter for being penetrated by the roots of the trees, and 
prevent the sides of the pit from giving the same check to those roots, which 
the sides of the pot or tub do to the plant contained in it. In the preparation 
of these holes, the lower spot, or hard-pan, should bo thrown out, and ten to 
twelve inches of stone substituted, for the double purpose of drainage, and 
retention of moisture in dry w r eather. — H. W. S. 
