238 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
December 29. 
of cow-dung, soft clay, hair mortar, with such and such 
other things added to make the thing more mysterious, 
I confess to put very little faith in them, except as tem¬ 
porary expedients. 
Hot, dry days and cold nights in May, and the first 
part of June, is a very trying time for old trees with a 
feeble circulation, and more trying when all the small 
boughs are cut off; therefore, I should like, if I were 
doctoring such a tree, to cover the trunk all the way up 
with bay bands, but not very tight. My successor at 
Shrubland Park has done wonders with hay bands, and 
a coat of moss under them, on transplanted large trees 
which he was obliged to move at a wrong season; hut 
as our old Holly has no small twigs to give vent to the 
upward flow, the mossing is not so essential for it. I 
know some first-rate gardeners who would prefer leaving 
a few young twigs here and there in the head of the 
tree, to “ encourage the rising sap,” but that is just the 
very thing I would avoid ; and I introduced the case of 
the Silver Firs, at page 201, on purpose to show the good 
effects of hindering the rise of the sap into the branches, 
or into new growth, until it was so strong as to be able 
to break open buds that you could hardly see at the 
first rising of the sap in the spring, for this reason, that 
I am fully persuaded, in my own mind, that three new 
shoots, thus started from hidden buds, as it were, are 
worth thirteen shoots of equal size but two or three 
years old. I am equally certain that this “ encouraging” 
of the sap, as it is called, does a great deal of harm in 
such cases. When the sap enters the mouths at the ex¬ 
tremity of the roots it differs nothing from drainage 
water from the same ground—as it travels upwards it 
must mix with the sap, or juice, or blood already in the 
tree, as surely as whiskey is mixed with hot water in a 
punch-bowl; and whatever the quality of that tree may 
be, that quality is imparted to the rising sap long 
before it opens the top bud. If you tap a Sugar Maple 
tree at the surface of the ground, and again at a height 
of ten or fourteen feet up the trunk, and draw a bottle 
full of juice from each tapping, the top one will be twice 
or three times the strength of the other. I know it 
would be so in a Birch tree, for my grandmother told 
me of it, and she was a good chemist in that line before 
Liebig was born. Now, the faster the rise of the sap 
the less it takes up, or mixes with the true blood of the 
tree; and the more watery it is, the more watery the 
shoot it makes, and the more time it takes to ripen it. 
An unripened shoot, at the end of the first season, is 
never so strong and useful in after years as one that is 
thoroughly ripe at first. It is also the first shoot that 
will give way when age or accident befalls tire tree; and 
that is one reason why very fast-growing trees seldom 
live so long as trees of the same kind which cannot 
grow so fast. 
This, we must recollect, is quite a different question 
from that about whether the timber from a fast-growing 
tree is more durable or stronger than that from a slow 
grower of the same kind; a fast-growing tree, in the 
bottom of a rich valley—say an Oak—will yield better 
timber than one of the same age which had to struggle 
on for years on the bleak hill side; but the one in the 
valley cannot bear up so well, or so long, against the 
infirmities of old age as the other; and so with all trees, 
notwithstanding all that has been said and believed to 
the contrary. The longer the rising sap is pent up for 
want of an easy outlet, the richer it is, so to speak, and 
the more healthy the new shoot it makes ; hence it is 
that I would never encourage a hasty growth in a 
stunted tree under the doctor. 
From the middle of April to the end of May there is 
always a give-and-take system in our climate between 
the rising sap, the bright sunny day, and the chilly 
night; hence the chief reason for covering the steni 
with hay-bands—they keep off’ the extremes of heat 
and cold, and the impulse given by the sun to the cir¬ 
culation is not taken by the frost at night. All these 
things ought to be present to the mind of the doctor or 
chief primer. 
If one but kuew where to look for the ends of the 
roots of this very old tree, a good deal of strength 
might be got by adding fresh soil over them, and by a 
system of regular waterings through the summer, for a 
couple of seasons, after the cutting over the top, but to 
water near the old trunk would be next to useless; still, 
if the soil all over the roots could be loosened, or taken 
off altogether, and fresh soil added instead, there is no 
doubt but a little root, here and there, might strike into 
it, and, if only one, it would be a good beginning, and 
would soon increase to many. The Holly, however, is 
not given to much root-making—an old one in particular; 
and what roots they make are as hard as iron, and as 
bare of fibres as the trunk they support. If the tree 
stands near the church, some of the roots are sure to be 
matted against the wall, and if the breadth of 18 inches 
of the earth next to the wall was removed down to the 
matted roots, and large quantities of water poured over 
them, so as thoroughly to soak down a great way, and 
then to fill up the trench with fresh soil, 1 am quite 
sure that the old tree would revive.again and last out 
a very long time yet. 
Now, although Clericvs and the old Holly-tree have 
furnished a text for all this, the subject is just as appli¬ 
cable to everyone of my readers who may have favourite 
old trees, and to every kind of old tree in the country, 
if they bear in mind that old evergreen trees, like his 
Holly, ought to be cut at the end of April, and other old 
trees before the rise of the sap, say in January or 
February. I have no doubt but Clericus himself has 
often taken the advantage of his own position to warn 
and advise a certain individual, or family, against pre¬ 
vailing errors, while the greater number of his flock 
took the subject as applicable to their own failings, and, 
let us hope, acted on his advice, as! hope many will do 
on mine, for I like old trees, and old friends, and old 
associations, so much so, indeed, that if I had my 
choice, I would sooner build my castle near some old 
stag-headed trees than in the best open park in the 
country without them, and any body who cut a dead 
branch out of my stags, would ever rue the day, if I 
came across him at the time. 
I often think how the world would stand if old trees 
could speak; such tales would put men and women, 
villages, parishes, counties, and kingdoms, by the ears 
together. From the fatal night on which Pyramus and 
Thisbe intended to meet under the Mulberry-trees, until 
the last night of the old year, such trees in the by 
paths of life have been witnesses to more than half 
the world would like the other half to know, and more 
than I would tell them if I really did know, but I shall 
never make a secret of my intentions towards The 
Cottage Gardener, the Editor, and his contributors, 
not forgetting the “ compliments of the season ” to 
them, and to all our numerous readers, who have enabled 
us to go on and prosper from a small beginning. 
D. Beaton. 
DISAPPOINTMENTS. 
There is no schoolmaster so successful in teaching 
as Experience. Much is done now-a-days to save us 
from the whip and the blow that the crusty old fellow 
will mercilessly use despite all the petitions and efforts 
of the would-be benevolent to the contrary. The old 
adage, “ lightly come and lightly go,” is based upon that 
principle of our nature that leads us to value an object 
in proportion to the difficulties its acquisition has cost 
us. Even gardening itself, with all its bewitching 
