The ornamental distribution of trees is considered under the titles Clump, Wood, etc. ; and here will be considered only a few practical details relative to the planting and management of trees.

Selection

Our guide in this must be the nature of the soil. If chalk is a principal constituent of this, the beech, birch, and ash must be the trees chiefly adopted; if clay, the oak; if rich loam, the elm. In moist situations, the alder, sallow, and willow; and in mountain, and dry soiled districts, all the hardy coniferae, the birch and the ash. Peat, if well drained, will bear the Scotch fir; and the Spanish chestnut will flourish on light sheltered loam. On the poorest and lightest soils, if well drained, the larch will establish itself. Similar attention must be paid to the soil in locating the shrubs. Rhododendrons delight in shade and leaf-mould; and others have their particular soils, of which information will be found in other pages, under their appropriate titles.

Manures

Trees, like all other plants, are benefited by being appropriately manured; their growth is thus accelerated, and contrary to old opinions, it is found that the wood of quickly-growing trees is more durable, and more tough than that of trees of the same species which have vegetated more tardily. Calcareous matter is always required by trees; and my brother, Mr. Cuthbert Johnson, has truly stated that on the poor hungry heath lands, such as those of Norfolk, Surrey, and the north, which contain hardly a trace of carbonate of lime, they find that, by dressing with chalk or marl, land intended for planting, the growth of the trees is very materially increased; and more recently, as in the forest of Dama-way in Scotland, the planters have found the greatest advantage from placing only a handful of lime (about four bushels per acre is sufficient) in the soil under the plants. By this means the young trees, they say, are forced forward; that is, they are supplied with the carbonate of lime at the very period of their growth, when their roots, from want of extent and vigour, are least able to absorb from the soil the portion of this earth so essential for their healthy growth.

And it is precisely such heath soils as those to which I have alluded as being so materially benefited by the application of lime, chalk, or marl (which also contains chalk), that are found, when examined in their natural state, to be nearly destitute of carbonate of lime.

It is for the same reasons that, in the early state of their growth, timber plantations are benefited so materially by being manured with organic matters - a fact well known to those who plant tor merely ornamental purposes; and it is because all timber trees contain phosphate of lime in very considerable proportions, that crushed bones are found to be so excellent a fertilizer for them; and hence one reason, why it has long been a well-known fact, that by burying dead animals under trees nearly exhausted for want of nourishment, those trees will almost invariably be considerably revived, and send out their shoots with unusual vigour; and how essential the presence of phosphate of lime is to their growth, may be judged of from the fact, that this salt constitutes 45 per cent, of the ashes of the oak; 35 in those of the hazel; 16.75 of the poplar; 23 in the hornbeam; 12 per cent, in those of the fir.

These chemical examinations naturally support the conclusion to which I have long come in my own experiments, that in all plantations of timber trees, both on the score of profit and of ornament, it is in almost all situations desirable to assist the growth of the young trees by a small addition of manure. On a large scale this must be chiefly confined to the use of the earths, either lime, chalk, or marl, according to their respective local value; and for this purpose a smaller proportion per acre of any kind of manure is of much greater value than is commonly supposed. I have usually, under every plant, merely applied a small shovelful of tolerably-rotted stable dung, stirring it up with the mould; and, as these experiments were principally made on a poor hungry gravelly soil, nearly destitute of carbonate of lime, I have usually added to the beach plants, instead of the farm-yard manure, a small quantity of chalk.