receiving much more heat by radiation than they are giving out by radiation. The oak should never be pruned severely, and this rule should be particularly observed when the tree is young. We have known several of the most intelligent gardener-foresters in Scotland err greatly in this; and, by exclusively pruning the oak plants, from misdirected care, throw them far behind the other kinds of timber with which they were mixed in planting. There is no other broad-leaved tree which we have seen suffer so much injury in its growth, by severe pruning, as the oak. The cause of this may be something of nervous susceptibility, or connected life, all the parts participating when one is injured; it may be owing to the tendency to putrescency of the sap-wood, or rather of the sap, the part around the section often decaying, especially {40} when the plant is not vigorous; or it may arise from some torpor or restricted connection of the roots, which, when robbed of their affiliated branch, do not readily forage or give their foraging to the support of the nearest remaining branch, or to the general top of the tree, but throw out a brush of twigs near the section. Although the oak often lingers in the growth while young, yet, after it attains to six inches or a foot in diameter, its progress is generally faster than most other kinds of hard wood, not appearing to suffer so much as others from excessive fruit-bearing. The value of the timber, and also of the bark, and the slight comparative injury occasioned to the under crop, whether of copse, grass, corn, or roots, independently of any patriotic motives, or religious reverence lingering in our sensorium from the time of the Druids, should give a preference to this tree for planting, wherever the soil and climate are suitable, over every other kind, with the exception of larch and willow, which, in particular soils, will pay better.