250 
THE HAND-BOOK OF GARDENING. 
and are therefore unable to feed till they can place themselves in 
similar freedom in the earth as they had before transplanting. 
When they are bent or obstructed in this way, their growth is also 
prevented, and new fibres spring from other parts of the root, out of 
the materials which would otherwise have enlarged the old fibres. 
Plants thus acquire a greater number of mouths, the oftener they 
are transplanted, a circumstance usually acted on by nurserymen, 
who shift their young trees and other plants for the purpose of mul¬ 
tiplying their root fibres, and consequently of strengthening the 
plants, by giving them a greater facility of feeding from having more 
mouths to feed with. This is also important in cultivating cabbages 
and greens. 
Every removal, however, must tend to obstruct or injure the root 
tips, and of course check the growth, by preventing them from feed¬ 
ing. But by lifting plants with balls of earth so as not disturb the 
root fibres, or by taking great care not to injure these, and at the 
same time spreading them carefully out by hand in their new situa¬ 
tion, Sir Henry Stewart, of Allanton, has introduced the novel and 
successful practice, founded on science, of transplanting even the 
largest trees.” 
Food of Plants.-— “The watering of a garden in dry weather, 
by throwing over it buckets of water from a pump, is of far less use 
than if the pump-water was thrown through the fine rose of a water¬ 
ing-pot, so that each drop might mix with and carry down a portion 
of air. Rain, again, which falls from a considerable height, must 
carry down a great deal of air, and hence it is found to fertilize more 
than any sort of watering by hand.” 
“ Soils, where water does not circulate freely, are popularly termed 
cold and sour, though their chief defect is the want of a due supply 
of air. The water of such soils indeed tastes vapid, somewhat like 
water deprived of air by boiling. Too much water in a soil is cer¬ 
tainly injurious; but even a rather wet soil will be greatly benefited 
if all its water be kept in free circulation by judicious draining, le¬ 
velling, and sloping; or, in the case of stiff clays, by manuring with 
coal-ashes and the like, to open the texture of the soil.” 
“The mineral part of soil, exclusive of lime, contributes nothing 
to the food of plants. On these principles we can easily account for 
the barrenness of stiff clays, dry sands, and more particularly soils 
chiefly consisting of granite sand, as in Arran, and near Plymouth ; 
while in the instance of sand or "clay from basalt or whinstone, as 
well as from limestone and chalk, the carbonic acid gas tends to 
greater fertility, as in the Lothians, Ayrshire, and Kent. No mix- 
