to consume the food thus supplied to it. The ana+ logy holds good between the vegetable and animal world. If the roots of the tree are injured, or do not receive the necessary supplies of nourishment, the tree must perish, like an animal unsupplied with food, whatever be the power of the appetite in one case, and of the vegetation in the other, to consume the nutritive substance, if it could be procured. This is dying by hunger. If, on the other hand, the powers of vegetation are in any respect injured, and the tree, either from natural decline, from severe amputation, or from any other cause, cease to supply those roots and leaves which suck the sap up into the system, then the tree dies of a decay in the powers of digestion. The tree, like the animal, is not nourished by food alone; air is also necessary to it.

The ash now puts forth its grey buds; and the hazel and the willow exhibit some signs of returning life in their silky, enfolded catkins. The leaves of the thornless rose and of the hawthorn are gradually becoming determinate.

The mulberry-tree. The quickest and most certain mode of raising it is from cuttings of the old branches. Take a branch in the month of March, eight or nine feet in length, plant it half its length in any good soil, and it will succeed to admiration, producing fruit the following spring.

The field-daisy is now seen scattered over dry pastures. Many are the tributes to this interesting floral indication of Omnipotence which we have inserted in our volumes. The following is from the pen of our late respected friend DR. MASON GOOD, the translator of Lucretius: it is extracted from the interesting memoir of this variously-learned man, by Dr. Olinthus Gregory, a work which we earnestly recommend to the attentive perusal of our readers :

The Daisy.

Not worlds on worlds in phalanx deep
Need we to prove a GOD is here;
The daisy, fresh from winter's sleep,
Tells of his hand in lines as clear.

For who but he who arched the skies,
And pours the day-spring's living flood,
Wondrous alike in all he tries,

Could rear the daisy's purple bud?

Mould its green cup, its wiry stem;
Its fringed border nicely spin;
And cut the gold-embossed gem
That, set in silver, gleams within?

And fling it, unrestrained and free,
O'er bill, and dale, and desert sod,
That man, where'er he walks, may see,
In every step, the stamp of GoD.

The almond-tree, whose blush-colour blossoms make their appearance before any leaves are seen, is among the earliest of the flowering fruit-trees, and forms a splendid ornament to the shrubbery in the months of March or April.

The planting and sowing of FOREST TREES is generally concluded in this month. The mixing of firtrees with oaks (except in very sheltered situations) is now frequently adopted by the planter.-See T.T. for 1825, p. 81.

In planting timber trees, select the longest-lived and most ornamental trees, such as the oak, Spanish chestnut, Scotch elm, English elm, ash, maple, beech, spruce, silver fir, pinaster. Plant them alternately, at thirty-six feet distance; inclose them singly with small stakes of larch, and warp them two feet up with small branches of the same, which will last for ten years. Fifty trees will be sufficient for an acre as a lawn of ornamental timber trees. An hundred acres will require 5000 plants, which, at an average of 25s. a thousand, will cost 67. 5s. The expense of

planting and inclosing singly, for workmanship alone, though the wood for the stakes come from the estate, as the present railing, including nails and workmanship to the full, 667. 5s. Add 61. 5s. for the plants, and the expense of planting an acre with ornamental trees is in all 721. 10s. Oak, Spanish chestnuts, and Scotch elm, are the sorts of timber in general use for the naval yards. Plant them eight feet distant. At fifteen years thin out to sixteen feet, and the timber and bark from the cuttings at this time will pay from 71. to 101. an acre. At thirty years of age, thin to thirty-two feet, and the bark and timber will then pay at least 251. an acre. Many of the growths from the trees cut over at fifteen years of age, will, at the age of forty, have made more progress than those from the original plant. By this method, a crop of grown trees may always be kept upon the ground; and granting the plantations were only one hundred acres, a number of them may be cut down for the naval yards, and part of them reared without any expense of perpetually replanting. The value of an acre of the above trees, at sixty years old, may be reckoned at 400l.: besides, the cuttings from the natural underwood will have paid a rent of not less than 37. an acre annually.

Planting oak.-The Rev. Dr. Lisle, of St. Fagan's, Glamorganshire, practises a method of planting oaks in pots, specimens of which may be seen at the Agricultural Society's Rooms, Hetling House, Bath. The acorns which produced these oaks were sown in pots in November; the pots were kept during the winter in an old melon bed, and under glass, and before they started they were plunged in the earth. He had more than 300 pots sown at the same time, fit to be turned out, and sufficient to furnish three acres of land with plants, allowing six yards between each plant. Acorns sown in November immediately from the tree are better than those sown in spring.

An OLD OAK TREE.

There grew an aged tree on the green,
A goodly Oak sometime had been,
With arms full strong, and largely displaid,
But of their leaves they were disaraid:
The body big and mightily pight,

Thoroughly rooted and of wondrous height.
Whylom had been the king of the field,
And mochel mast to the husband did yield,
And with his nuts larded many swine,
But now the grey moss marred his rine;
His bored boughs were beaten with storms,
His top was bald, and wasted with worms,
His honour decayed, his branches sere.

The COWTHORPE OAK..

SPENSER.

This gigantic and venerable king of the forest stands on the extremity of the village of Cowthorpe, near Wetherby, in Yorkshire, in a retired field, sheltered on one side by the ancient church belonging to the place, and on another by a farm-house, the rural occupations of which exactly accord with the character of the oak, whose aged arms are extended towards it with a peculiar air of rustic vigour, retained even in decay; like some aged peasant, whose toil-worn limbs still give evidence of the strength which enabled him to acquit himself of the labours of his youth. It is mentioned by the late Dr. Hunter, in his edition of Evelyn's Sylva, in the following note on a passage respecting the extraordinary size of an oak in Sheffield Park: Neither this, nor any of the oaks mentioned by Mr. Evelyn, bears any proportion to one now growing at Cowthorpe. The dimensions are almost incredible. Within three feet of the ground it measures sixteen yards, and close by the ground twenty-six yards. Its height, in its present ruinous state (1776), is almost eighty-five feet, and its principal limb extends sixteen yards from the bole. Throughout the whole tree the foliage is extremely thin, so that the anatomy of the ancient branches may be distinctly seen in the height of summer. When compared to this, all other trees are but children of the forest.'

This description so nearly answers to the present state of the tree, that it does not appear to have suffered any considerable deprivation since the above period. In girth, indeed, it is inferior to the magnificent remains of the oak in Salcey Forest; but, altogether, it is a noble and imposing ruin, on which it is impossible to look without entering into the wish suggested to an ingenious writer by the sight of a similar object, and poetically expressed in the following lines:

When the huge trunk, whose bare and forked arms
Pierced the mid sky, now prone, shall bud no more,

Still let the massy ruin, like the bones
Of some majestic hero, be preserved
Unviolated and revered ;-

Whilst the grey father of the vale, at eve
Returning from his sweltering summer task,

To tend the new-mown grass, or raise the sheaves
Along the western slope of yon grey hill,

Shall stop to tell his listening sons how far

She stretched around her thick-leaved ponderous boughs,
And measure out the space they shadowed.

Strutt's Sylva Brit.

TRANSPLANTING TREES.

If the branches of the subject pitched upon be in an unfavourable state, this evil may be counteracted by a top-dressing of marl and compost, mixed with four times the quantity of tolerable soil, spread around the stem of the tree, at four feet distance. This mode Sir Henry Steuart recommends as superior to that of disturbing the roots, as practised in gardens for the same purpose of encouraging the growth of fruit-trees; and assures us, that the increase, both of the branches and roots, will be much forwarded, and that the tree will be fit for removal in the third year,

Process of Removing and Replanting Trees, as practised by Sir Henry Steuart, at Allanton, in Lancashire. The tree is loosened in the ground by a set of labourers, named pickmen, who, with instruments made for the purpose, first ascertain with accuracy how far the roots of the subject extend. This is easily known when the subject has been cut round, as the trench marks the line where the roots have been amputated. If the tree has not sustained this previous operation, the extent of the roots will be found to correspond with that of the branches. The pickers then proceed to bare the roots from the earth with the utmost attention not to injure them in the operation. It is to the preservation of these fibres that the transplanter is to owe the best token of his success, namely, the feeding the branches of the tree with sap even to their very extremities. The roots are then extricated from the soil. A mass of earth