■) CULTURAL AGENCY OF QUICKLIME. 1 
an untamed savage. It is running to waste with leaves and branches, and has none of the look of 
civilisation abovit it. Only let him use his saw for a short time upon any young specimen just growing 
into adolescence, and throwing out its delicate branches like a fine fall of drapery to conceal its naked 
trunk, and you shall see how he will improve its appearance. Yes, he will trim up those branches 
till there is a tall naked stem higher than his head ; that shows that the tree lias been taken care of — ■ 
has been trimmed, ergo, trained and educated into a look of respectability. This is his great point — 
the fundamental law of sylvan beauty in his mind— a bare pole, icith a mop of foliage at the end of it. 
If he cannot do this, he may content himself with thining out the branches to let in the light, or clip- 
ping them at the ends to send the head upwards, or cutting out the leader to make it spread laterally. 
But though the trees formed by these latter modes of pruning are well enough, they never reach that 
exalted standard which has for its type a pole as bare as a ship's mast, with only a flying stud sail of 
green boughs at the end of it. 
"We suppose this very common pleasure — for it must be a pleasure — which so many persons find in 
trimming up ornamental trees, is based on a feeling that trees growing quite in the natural way, must 
be capable of some melioration by art ; and as pruning is usually acknowledged to be useful in develop- 
ing certain points in a fruit tree, a like good purpose will be reached by the use of the knife upon an 
ornamental tree. But the comparison does not hold good, since the objects aimed at are essentially 
different. Pruning — at least all useful pruning — as applied to fruit trees, is applied for the purpose of 
adding to, diminishing, or otherwise regulating the fruitf 'illness of the tree ; and this, in many cases, is 
effected to the acknowledged diminution of the growth, luxuriance, and beauty of the tree — so far as 
spread of branches, and prodigality of foliage go. But even here, the pruner who prunes only for the 
sake of using the knife, not unfrcquently goes too far, injures the perfect maturity of the crop, and 
hastens the decline of the tree, by depriving it of the fair proportions which nature has established 
between the leaf and the root. 
But for the most part, we imagine that the practice we complain of, is a want of perception of what 
is truly beautiful in an ornamental tree. It seems to us indisputable, that no one who has any percep- 
tion of the beautiful in nature, could ever doubt for a moment that a fine single Elm or Oak, which has 
never been touched by the knife, is the most perfect standard of sylvan grace, symmetry, dignity, and 
finely balanced proportions that it is possible to conceive. One would no more wish to touch it with 
saw or axe (unless to remove some branch that lias fallen into decay) than to give a nicer curve to the 
rainbow, or add freshness to the dew-drop. If any readers, who still stand by the pruning knife, will 
only give themselves up to the study of such trees as these — -trees that have the most completely 
developed forms that Nature stamps upon the species — they are certain to arrive at the same conclu- 
sions. A Pollard Willow should be the very type and model of beauty in the eye of the champion of 
the pruning saw. Its finest parallels in the art of mending Nature's proportions for the sake of beauty, 
arc in the flattened heads of a certain tribe of Indians, and the deformed feet of Chinese women. 
What Nature has especially shaped for a delight to the eye, and a fine suggestion to the spiritual 
sense, as a beautiful tree, or the human form divine, man should not lightly undertake to re-model, or 
clip of its fair proportions. 
CULTURAL AGENCY OF QUICKLIME. 
By Mb. J. TOWERS, C.M.H.S., &c. &a 
r. 
)Y the term quic7c-]ime, we would include all those conditions in which lime is in a fit state to prepare 
iO lime-water. In alluding to these, an error will be obviated into which they arc apt to fall who 
take for granted all that is but too vaguely and incautiously written. Lime hot from the kiln exerts a 
powerful attraction for water, and hence it destroys raw or green vegetable matters by breaking up 
their tissues in its greedy search for the watery fluid which they contain: during tlie chemical action 
thus set up their constituent carbon is revealed, and the decomposed mass is blackened, or. in fact. 
burned. This first direct action of hot lime has, in a recent French publication (the Chimie de Cu/ti- 
vateur), been thus erroneously noticed : — " The properties of lime arise from the force with which iV 
attracts carbonic arid, from the atmosphere or soil to which it may be exposed. This attraction for 
carbonic acid is so powerful, that, if lime be placed in contact with animal or vegetable matters, they 
arc decomposed with great rapidity for the purpose of furnishing it." Kcally this is too bad, inasmuch 
as the sentence is not only ill-constructed, but vitiates facts. ra 
Lime does attract carbonic acid from the air ; but the time required for its complete carbonation, g 
^ that is, to convert it to chalk, is so great that it may be kept for weeks or months in a garden pot or U- 
