42 
THE FOOD OF TREES IS IMBIBED [Part II. 
Whether this 
is true or not 
of vital import- 
ance to trans¬ 
planting. 
authority of practice, and to stand on experiment 
and facts. It is not a vulgar vulgar error, but a 
scientific vulgar error; and should the man of 
common sense reproach me that I have wasted 
much time to prove what we need no ghost to 
tell us, my excuse is, that men of uncommon sense 
(I think, Senebier first) have repeated these sup¬ 
posed facts one after the other, till they have 
become acknowledged data, which vitiate our 
physiological theories at their earliest source, in 
regard to the first absorption of food by plants. 
Thus much in regard to vegetable physiology 
in general. In regard to transplanting in par¬ 
ticular, the truth or falsehood of this fact is of 
every importance; since, if the life or death of 
a radish depended on the extremity of its root, 
an argument might be drawn that the life of 
other plants might depend on the extremities of 
theirs. But when we find this assertion to be 
totally devoid of foundation, — when we find the 
radish, deprived of all the immature parts of its 
root, absorbing nourishment for itself till it has 
replaced all its mutilations of head and heel,—we 
shall have the less horror of depriving our trans¬ 
planted trees of their rootlets by simple excision; 
and we shall be the less apt to waste labour in 
taking up long contused roots (from this cause, 
