Every gardener is aware that trees will fruit the first season after transplanting, just if they have had the rudiments of the fruit formed in the bud before transplanting, and should the blossom not be injured by severe weather. Every gardener is aware, though Sir Henry seems not, that all fruit trees, of any size, form these rudiments the season after transplanting, and that they invariably fruit the second season, if the season suit the fruiting of the kind; and every gardener of any experience is capable, even without Sir Henry’s instructions, of removing a fruit tree of considerable size, without injuring it so severely as to prevent it fruiting both first and second season, which it will do, and even mature fine fruit both years, though during the first, under very unfavourable circumstances, it should scarcely be able to develope leaves 1-5th of the usual size, and though these leaves wither and drop off long before the summer is ended, while the fruit remains to ripen on the tree. This is _a direct consequence of evaporation_. The thin leaves shrivel up in the ardent sun from evaporation and want of sufficient supply by root-suction; and the bulbs of the fruit, from their massiveness, contain sufficient moisture to resist withering till the night, when they drink the dews, and suck up some little moisture from the roots, undiminished {279} by evaporation in the transit, to replenish the daily loss. Sir Henry remarks, that “no man who knows any thing of wood, will put down the oak or the elm on light sand or gravel, as it is only on deep loam and clay that the oak, in particular, will really thrive and grow into timber.” No man who knows _how much a suitable soil for any kind of plant is under regulation of the moistness or dryness of the atmosphere, and other circumstances_, will refrain from smiling at Sir Henry’s very superficial acquaintance with his own subject, and at the manner he thus again brings forward mankind to testify in support of his own error. Our author will place the above quotation among the errata should he take a ride up Strath-Tay from Birnam to Kenmore. Among other items of expense given by our author, none of which seem to be overstated, we feel grateful for the information, that compost manure of lime, farm-yard dung, and moss, can be obtained, compounded, fermented, conveyed and applied, at the rate of 6d. and 9d. per single and double load! Sir Henry makes good his assertion, that slow grown timber is always stronger, denser, and more durable than fast grown, by a cloud of witnesses,—every forester, gardener, and carpenter of the {280} country, is ready to attest it of course! There are few sublunary matters which admit of evidence more conclusive. We quote his account of this uniform “law of nature.”