350 SYLVA AMERICANA. 



insertion of the shaft, and gradually tapering to the point. The 

 handle is made sufficiently large to be grasped by both hands, 

 and the operator with one stroke drives the prong into the ground 

 to the depth required for seeding trees, and by depressing the 

 handle, the point of the instrument raises up the earth, leaving a 

 vacuity or opening in loose earth, into which a person, holding a 

 plant in readiness, places the root, and with the foot fixes it in 

 the soil. A stout active workman with this instrument, and the 

 aid of a boy, will transplant a greater number of seeding trees 

 on light moor soils than by any other method at present known. 



2d. The diamond dibble (6) is recommended by Sang : it is 

 made of a triangular-shaped plate of steel, furnished with an iron 

 shaft and wooden handle. The sides are each four inches long, 

 and the upper part or side four inches and a half broad. It is 

 used for planting on sandy and gravelly soils where the surface 

 produce of herbage is short. In this case the planter makes the 

 ground ready with the instrument in one hand, and inserts the 

 plant with the other. He carries the plants in a bag or basket 

 suspended from his waist ; he strikes the dibble into the ground 

 in a slanting direction so as to direct the point inwards, and, by 

 drawing the handle towards himself, an opening is made, and 

 kept open by the steel plate for the reception of the roots of the 

 plant by the other hand. The instrument is then removed, and 

 the earth made firm about the roots of the plant by a stroke with 

 the heel of the instrument. 



3d. By the spade, a cut is made in the turf with the spade and 

 crossed by another at a right angle : the two cuts thus made re- 

 semble the figure of the letter T. The handle of the spade 

 being depressed backwards forces open the edges of the cuts, and 

 in the opening thus made the roots of the plant are inserted ; the 

 spade is then withdrawn, and the turf replaced by pressure with 

 the foot. 



Sir John Sinclair describes an improved mode of slit planting, 

 as follows. The operator with his spade makes three cuts, twelve 

 or fifteen inches long, crossing each other in the centre, at an 

 angle of sixty degrees, the whole having the form of a star. He 

 inserts his spade across one of the rays (a), a few inches from. 



