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TRANSPLANTING

TRANSVAAL

young flowers and garden-vegetables to take advantage of the start given them under protection. Tree-seedlings should not be transplanted till the spring following the planting of the seeds. Young trees three or more years old are best transplanted in the autumn when the leaves are falling. Fall-planting enables the small root-fibers to make a stait before spring and permits the trees to be cultivated early. The roots should be pruned to leave no ragged wounds. Young trees with a taproot should have it cut to one third its length at the first transplanting. This promotes thrift and makes any subsequent transplanting easier. As about half of a young tree's roots are injured in transplanting, that much or a larger proportion of the top should be cut back. Large trees must be transplanted to soil of the same character as that in which they have been growing. A hole for a large tree, dug in stiff clay, is apt to become a drainage-sink for surface-water, in which the roots are flooded and deprived of air. (See DRAINAGE.) The bottom of the hole should not be concave, deepest in the center, but dome-shaped, deepest at the edge, with a couple of deep post-augur holes for drainage. This shape of bottom conforms to the spreading habit of the roots.

Garden-vegetables are started indoors or in hotbeds (q. v.) and are transplanted to give them the greatest advantage of the growing season and to bring the best early-market prices. The seeds are planted in fine, rich earth, usually in shallow trays or pots, and transplanted at various degrees of growth. The treatment of a few common and typical vegetables involving transplanting is given below. Cabbage: The seeds for the early crop are started under glass 30 or 40 days before the ground is fit. Plants from three to five inches high may be transplanted, if properly hardened, to the permanent patch, in middle latitudes, as early as May first. Celery: Seeds are sown under glass in February; small plants are transplanted for thinning out when large enough to handle, when the taproot is destroyed; they are transplanted a second time when well-established. In the final transplanting the plants are set in trenches or on the ground, and are covered. Lettuce comes up very thick, and, if sprouted indoors, may be transplanted when large enough to handle. Tomato: Seeds are started eight or ten weeks before setting out of doors, and are transplanted two or three times, using larger pots each time and giving a light dressing of nitrate of soda or of liquid manure. Sweet potato: The tubers are laid three or four inches deep in a hotbed three or four weeks before frost is over. The sprouts are broken from the tuber when four or five inches long and well-rooted, and are transplanted

to the field, where they will form vines. Their tips, if cut off six to nine inches long, can also be planted to form other vines. On a small scale the above mentioned and other seeds can be sprouted in window-boxes indoors, but must not be subjected to too great extremes of temperature. See HOTBED.

Trans-Sibe'rian Railway. See SIBERIAN RAILROAD.

Transvaal (trans-val'}, formerly the South African Republic (1833-1902), is a British possession in Africa. It lies between Vaal River and Limpopo River and is bounded by Matabeleland (Rhodesia) at the north; Portuguese East Africa and Natal on the east; the Orange Colony to the south; and Bechuanaland on the west from Orange River to Southern Rhodesia. Swaziland was a protectorate of the former republic, which had an area of 119,139 square miles, but the transfer of the Vryheid and Utrecht districts; of Swaziland; and of part of the Wakkerstroom district to Natal reduced the area to 111,196 square miles. So Transvaal is of quite the same size as Arizona.

Surface and Climate. The land consists mainly of a plateau 3,500 to 5,000 leet above the sea. Lying in the same latitude south as Florida lies north, it has a semitropical climate, which, however, is dry and admirably adapted for settlers from temperate climes. The platea.u is bounded eastward by mountains rising 8,275 feet that shut off the winds of the Indian Ocean, while deserts west of Transvaal dry the winds from the Atlantic. It is crossed in the north by the Zand Mountains and in the south by the Witwatersrand (Whitewater Ridge). Its chief rivers are the Vaal and Limpopo, and it has some large lakes. Both the mountains and the plateau are excep-tionally rich in coal, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, lead, saltpeter, sulphur and tin. The soil, if irrigated, would be well-suited to agriculture, but the rainfall is deficient; and the forests, chiefly acacias, are only of slight extent.

People and Government. The country was first occupied in 1833-7 t»y Boers from Cape Colony, among them a boy destined to become famous as President Kruger, who named their land Transvaal because it is across beyond Vaal River. In 1856 they became a republic, but factional troubles, unwise administration and wars with the natives led to annexation by Great Britain in 1877. In 1881, in consequence of fighting against England, the republic regained independence, subject, however, to British control over its foreign affairs. The discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfields (1885) attracted great numbers of foreigners, chiefly British, and finally occasioned annexation again to Britain in 1900. (See BOER WAR.) The population is 1,676,611 (that of Swaziland being 99,959), of whom