Mr Cruickshank must surely have had little acquaintance with soft, spongy, close-bottomed soils, or he would not have asserted that pit-planted trees are not subject to be thrown. If planted in the early part of winter or autumn, trees of the usual size, which have remained from one to three years in the nursery line, are very frequently thrown from such soils. This is caused by the freezing earth first catching fast hold of the plant at the surface, and afterwards swelling underneath from the enlargement of the freezing water in its pores, and from the open crystallized _honeycomb_ arrangement which takes place by congelation. As the stem is fast to {350} the ground at the surface, and the earth subsequently enlarged underneath as far as the congelation proceeds, the roots below the congelation must of necessity be drawn upwards to the distance which the ground has swelled after the stem was fixed to the surface. The earth, on thaw, first loses hold of the plant at the surface, and then falls away as it contracts. Each successive frost and thaw during winter thus raises the plant a certain space, till by spring it often is so far extracted, as to fall over on its side. When the plant has stood a season, there is generally a tuft of herbage around its stem, which prevents the freezing in a considerable degree; and the roots having fixed in the lower earth, resist the pulling up so much, that the hold which the frozen earth has of the stem at the surface gives way, sometimes pulling off a portion of the bark, and the earth rises around the stem in place of pulling the tree. Instead of the season for spring planting being over by the middle of March, we think that, in many of our wet moors, it should then only be commencing, especially under the pitting system. However, planting should never be deferred a day later in spring than what is absolutely necessary to render the ground sufficiently dry for the process. {351} Mr Cruickshank’s opinions regarding pruning and thinning are generally not very incorrect. His commencing sentence on pruning, that “most deciduous trees, if left to themselves, have a tendency to grow with short trunks, containing little timber, and to waste their strength on large unwieldy tops,” would, however, lead us to form a different conclusion. The very tall, clean, straight, deciduous trees, in the American forests, give a sufficient answer to this. We like his remark respecting thinning, that “it is only efficacious when applied as a preventive, not as a cure.”