Little, if any, watering is needed for late autumn plantings.
_Those parts of a plant which are not accustomed to exposure are those which suffer from it._ You may garden bare-handed in a cold wind and not be the worse for it, but, if both your arms were bared to the shoulders, the consequences would probably be very different.

A bundle of rose-trees or shrubs will bear a good deal on their leaves and branches, but for every moment you leave their roots exposed to drying and chilling blasts they suffer.

When a plant is out of the ground, protect its crown and its roots at once.

If a plant is moved quickly, it is advantageous, of course, to take it up with as much earth as possible, if the roots remain undisturbed in their little plat.
Otherwise, earth is no better than any other protection; and in sending plants by post, &c.

(when soil weighs very heavily), it is better to wash every bit of soil out of the roots, and then thoroughly wrap them in moss, and outside that in hay or tow, or cotton-wool.
Then, if the roots are comfortably spread in nice mould at the other end of the journey, all should go well.
I reserve a sneaking credulity about "lucky fingers." Or rather, I should say, a belief that some people have a strange power (or tact) in dealing with the vegetable world, as others have in controlling and coaxing animals.
It is a vivid memory of my childhood that (amongst the box-edged gardens of a family of eight), that of my eldest brother was almost inconvenienced by the luck of his fingers.