also acquired a certain granular arrangement akin to polarization or crystallization, which {188} allows the water gradually to percolate; it is also bored by the earth-worm, and other insects, and the plant itself, after the roots have struck anew and the fractures healed, possesses a vitality which better enables it to withstand the exclusion of air from the roots, and chilling by the water the ensuing winter, and either prevents absorption of the stagnant fluid, or counteracts its putrid tendency. Planting succeeds best in soil of this description when the ground has been under grass for some period, at least the new planted tree, in this case, is less liable to the root-rot; and trenching or digging previous to planting is of more utility, as the turfiness prevents the clay from sinking down into impervious mortar, and allows the water to percolate to the drains. Mr Billington is very earnest in recommending to drain well at first, and to keep the drains (open drains) in repair; he also directs, where the ground is very impervious and wet, to take large square sods, about 18 inches square and 9 inches thick, from the drains while digging in early winter, and place one of these, the grassy side undermost, in the site which each plant is to occupy. In the spring, by the time of planting, the sod has become firmly fixed, and the two swards rotting afford an excellent nourishment to the plant, which is inserted in the {189} centre of the sod, with the roots as deep as the original surface; the drains, being necessarily numerous, afford turf sufficient for all the plants. This is good. He also gives sensible directions to beat down, hoe, or cut away all weeds, shrubs, and grass, from the young plants, and to remove all rough herbage and thickets of shrubs, that form harbour for the short-tailed mouse, which is exceedingly destructive, in the case both of planting and sowing; in the former, by nibbling the bark from the stem, and biting off the twigs of the young trees, (from which our author may have taken the hint of cutting in, as mankind took that of pruning from the browsing of the ass), and gnawing their roots immediately below the surface of the ground; and in the latter, by devouring the seed in the ground, and cutting down the seedling annual shoot. He also instructs to keep the tree to one leader, shortening all straggling large branches; but his assertion, that plants which had the tops of the straggling branches pinched off in the first part of summer, grew much larger in consequence, looks rather absurd; although we have known a part of a hedge, clipped a week or two after the growth had commenced in spring, grow more luxuriantly than the part which had been pruned in the same manner before the growth had {190} commenced. This was owing to the check by the late clipping, throwing the period of growth into warm moist July; what was earlier clipped performed its growth in dry June, and was considerably