Page:The new British province of South Australia.djvu/24

Rh however, has lately been discovered of transplanting full-grown trees so that they shall flourish as if they had not been removed. The art, for a knowledge of which we are indebted to Sir Henry Steuart, consists in removing the whole of the tree uninjured; the stem, all the limbs, every branch and twig, every root and fibre; and in placing the several parts of this whole in the same relative situation as they occupied before; so that each part shall continue to perform its proper office, the trunk to be nourished by its proper number of mouths above and below; and a due proportion or balance be preserved between the weight of the branches and the strength of the roots, between the action of the roots as well as branches on opposite sides, between the functions of each part and the functions of all the other parts, respectively and together. The work of colonizing a desert bears a curious resemblance to that of transplanting full-grown trees. In neither case is it the ultimate object merely to remove; in both cases it is to establish; and as, in the former case, the immediate object is to remove, not a mere trunk, but an entire tree, so, in the latter case, the immediate object is to remove, not people merely, but society. In both cases equally, success depends upon attention to details. The planters of modern colonies have generally gone to work without much attention to details; as if society might be established in a desert without