their upsetting; and the roots, from exposure to the air, will swell to extraordinary size[23], so as to render them, ere long, the firmest rooted trees in the wood. The labour of this not amounting to the value of sixpence each, will be counterbalanced thrice {94} over by the ease of grubbing the roots for knees; and the whole brought to the shipwright will produce more than double the price that the straight tree alone would have done. _The forester should also examine and probe the roots of his growing larch, even those of considerable size, in sound ground; and when several strong horizontal spurs, not exceeding four, are discovered nearly straight, and from two to five feet long, he ought to bare these roots to that distance, that they may swell, carefully pruning away any small side-roots, and reserve these plants as valuable store_, taking good heed that no cart-wheel in passing, or feet of large quadruped, wound the bared roots. In exposed situations the earth may be gradually removed from the roots. The rot in larch taking place in the part appropriate to knees, the forester cannot be too wary in selecting the situations where there is no risk of its attack, for planting those destined for this purpose. It is also desirable, if possible, to have the knee timber in ground free of stones or gravel, as the grubbing in stoney ground is expensive, and the roots often embrace stones which, by the future swelling of the bulb, are completely imbedded and shut up in the wood, particularly in those places between the spurs {95} where the saw section has to divide them for knees. Were the roots carefully bared at an early period, it would tend to prevent the gravel from becoming imbedded in the bulb. Nothing can be more annoying to the shipwright, when he has bestowed his money, ingenuity, and labour, upon an unwieldy root, and brought his knees into figure at the cost of the destruction of his tools by the enveloped gravel, to discover stains of incipient rot which renders it lumber. This plan of baring the roots might be extended to oak trees for knees, baring and pruning about a foot out from the bulb annually. By exposure to the air, the timber of the root would mature and become red wood of sufficient durability. When covered with earth, the root of the oak remains white or sap wood, and soon decays after being dug up, the matured wood of the stem scarcely extending at all underneath the surface of the ground. The roots of the pine tribe are the reverse of this, at least the bulb and the spurs near it, are the best matured, reddest, toughest, most resinous, part of the tree. It is probably unnecessary to observe, that it would be folly to remove the earth from the bulb of trees in situations where water would stand for any length of time in the excavation. {96}