treating of numerous facts, such as Mr Cruickshank’s, many inaccuracies may always be picked out, but the above are rather too prominent. Mr Cruickshank censures the practice of covering fir seeds one-half inch deep in England, referring the {330} demand there for Scots plants to the seeds being thus buried in place of being sown, and states that they should only be covered one-fourth of an inch, as is the practice in Aberdeenshire. He also reprehends the author of the Encyclopædia of Gardening, on account of some directions which this author has given, to form, by forcing, a fine friable soil, suitable for the delicate seeds of trees, where this does not previously exist. Now, we should consider that the difference of climate between the neighbourhood of London and Aberdeen would require a difference of cover nearly equal to this; and that forcing a friable earth for seed-beds was absolutely necessary, in the very adhesive clays around London, and so general in the more recent formations of the south and middle of England, although superfluous in the north of Scotland, where sandy or light soil is sufficiently abundant. Seeds, under a moist cloudy atmosphere, will vegetate without cover at all; but in situations where the air is arid in spring, with much sunshine, a covering of some depth is necessary, and that covering, where the rudiments of the plant spring out weak and delicate, is required to be soft and friable, a good absorber and retainer of moisture, and not disposed to run together with rain, or crack with drought. Mr Cruickshank gives an account of our different {331} forest trees, neither very accurate nor interesting, but, luckily, not very tedious. He then proceeds to treat of nursery, sowing, transplanting, and choosing of plants, where many sensible, though some of them common-place, observations occur, of much use to the generality of planters. His views, however, of the proper manner of planting seedlings in the nursery, are defective. The best method of planting these—neither by laying, nor by dibbling—is first to stretch the line and make a furrow, level in the bottom, as broad as the roots may stretch, with the inner side straight and steep. One person then holds the plant erect in its berth, from two to four inches from the perpendicular side, according to the general size of the horizontal roots, so that the fibres may be regularly spread; and another person throws on the earth from the place of the next furrow; the placer of the plants footing the earth to the roots as he proceeds, or after the row is completed. The following observations of Mr Cruickshank are worthy the attention of planters: