Choose, if possible, a cool cloudy day. Water the plants thoroughly in the hotbed or cold frame a few hours before lifting them. Lift them with a trowel or small spade, and keep as much earth on their roots as possible. With a transplanting trowel, make holes deep enough so that the plant will be a little deeper in the soil than before transplanting. Unless the soil is moist, a little water put in the hole with the plant is beneficial. The evening is considered best for transplanting if the weather is clear. If the sun is very hot, the plants should be shaded for a few days until the roots become established and begin their work. Shingles slanting over the plants from the south side and driven into the ground to hold them in position are best. Papers held by means of two stones also give good results. The practice of covering them with inverted cans is not a good one, as the light is almost completely cut off. A few holes in the can would help considerably. Care must be taken to pack the earth firmly about the roots. Watering again twenty-four hours after transplanting is often necessary. If the plant has a leafy top, it is best to take off some of the leaves, as they tend to give off water more rapidly than the roots can at first take it in. TRANSPLANTING TREE SEEDLINGS Nuts and other tree seeds collected the previous autumn should now be planted in the forestry plots in rows a foot apart. As the seeds may not all grow, they may be planted close together in the row and thinned out the following spring if necessary. They need some shelter from the sun the first summer. In large plots this is provided by means of a slat covering, but in a small plot cheese-cloth tacked on strips and fastened on corner posts is satisfactory. When a shower comes, this cheese-cloth screen should be removed so that the rain may moisten the plot evenly. Seedlings may be transplanted from the woods or from the forestry rows before the leaves open out. BUDDING In budding, a slit like the letter T is made in the side of the young seedling close to the ground. The bark is raised a little at the point where the vertical slit meets the horizontal one, and a bud of desired variety with a shield-shaped bit of bark (and perhaps a little wood) attached to it is shoved in and the sides of the slit bound down upon it. After the bud, or scion, has started to grow, the stock is cut off an inch above the point where the bud was inserted. The bud then makes rapid growth, and in two years the resulting tree is large enough to set in its permanent place in the orchard. CUTTINGS