We have now brought before the reader a pretty fair picture of the Forestry of the present day. Some may wonder that the written science of arboriculture should be so imperfect and inaccurate; but the knowledge of the art, and the power of communicating that knowledge, are of so different a {359} character, it not unfrequently happens, that those write who cannot act, and those who can, are incompetent to write—sometimes unwilling; besides, correct opinions on this subject, as on most others, are only just beginning to be formed. We have endeavoured to assist in disentangling the correct from the erroneous. It is impossible for the most wary always to avoid misconception of facts, but man merits the name of rational only, when he evinces a readiness to break from those misconceptions, to which the narrow-minded, the proud, the vain, and the creature of habit and instinct, cling so obstinately. As a friend, we have stood on no ceremony with our brother arboriculturists. We have laid ourselves open to their criticism, and we hope they will shew as little ceremony with us. ENDNOTES TO PART IV. [36] This repetition of our directions on pruning is intentional—“Carthago est delenda.” [37] The coniferæ have a weaker or more connected vitality than most other trees—the whole individual participating in the injury of any part. Perhaps this arises from the liability of resinous juice to putrescency—any putrid affection in one spot of the more vital part of the tree spreading quickly over the whole. [38] Transplanting having an opposite influence on the young of herbaceous and woody vegetables, in the former when not already rising into stem, retarding, and the latter accelerating or furthering development of the reproductory parts, is a good lesson to reasoners from analogy. The root-fractured herbaceous plants repairing the injury almost immediately, and before the rudiments of the reproductory parts have time for expansion, the greater quantity of moist nourishment afforded by the unsought newly stirred soil, produces a flush of radical leaves, which react to further the extension of the roots. The new rootlets have again more connexion to promote the growth of the radical leaves, and to induce offsets—_tillering_—from the sides of the bulb, than to nourish or mature the core part, from whence the stem arises—a certain comparative extension and maturity of the core being necessary to the rising of the stem. Thence seeding can be retarded, and life in annuals be continued, _ad libitum_. On the contrary, in woody vegetables of perennial stem, the reparation of the root-injury takes place slowly, and the evaporation from the stem and elevated branches and leaves exhausting the little moisture afforded by the inadequate root-suction during an entire season, gives time and bias for the germs to pass into reproductory instead of productory organs even the first season. [39] We rather think Mr Sang mentions this.