16 AMEKICAN FOKESTKY 



one of fourteen inches. The taper is very slight, the twelve-inch diameter 

 continuing up to about 25 ft. or well up onto the reddish part of the trunk, 

 after which it suddenly tumbles iu and branches to the crown limbs. Total 

 height about forty feet, of which all but about twelve feet of crown is saw 

 lumber. The branches of the crown, down to about an inch, are sold for 

 firewood, and, if no faggot-gatherers are at hand, the rest is piled in rectangular 

 piles, some six by ten feet by seventy feet high. I did not see any being burnt. 

 They could easily shovel in sand layers in the pile and allow the whole to 

 reduce itself to compost for planting operations. I did not have the oppor- 

 tunity to examine the interior of a pile, and, as it was not the planting season, 

 nothing was being done with them. 



METHOD OF PLANTING KIEFER 



One of the objects of my tour was to see whether the method of planting 

 of Baron Manteuffel, extensively used in Saxony during his administration 

 as chief forester, had extended itself to Prussia and Hesse, or was being still 

 used in Saxony. It consists essentially in surrounding the roots of each small 

 plant with a little hill of compost, and covering this with a cone of sod, made 

 of two crescents of turf lapping to a cone with the grass side in. It is a 

 splendid, if costly method, as it surrounds the roots of the young plant with 

 the nutritious vapors from the compost and the sod, engendered by the heat 

 of the sun upon the outside of the cone. It was highly successful with spruce 

 during the Baron's time, as it not only raised the young tree above the 

 surrounding vegetation, but also kept it free from sogginess and cold. 



However, I saw no kiefer planted that way. The invariable method was 

 to plant in holes, with the root collet level with the prevailing soil, and com- 

 post around the roots. I saw no trees planted under three years old, and 

 this seems a good thing when we reflect how subject to fungus diseases, such 

 as roiissi, pine is during its early years in the nursery. It is well to have it 

 where it can be watched and guarded during the earliest years, and doubt- 

 less the expense of another year in the nursery more than offsets the extra 

 cost of the Manteufifel method of planting for young plants which would other- 

 wise be advisable in the field. 



The majority of the cuttings were in long strips, a mile or so long by, 

 say, four hundred feet wide; though one occasionally met square or irregular 

 sections. As a rule the stumps were pulled and sold before replanting, 

 though now and then you saw a section with the young trees missing, the 

 stumps of the former stand. Virtually the only pine forest I saw with 

 natural reproduction was a big tract of eight or nine hundred acres near 

 Mannheim, which forest appeared to be all natural reproduction. Its newly 

 regenerated sections contained a thick furr of young i>ines, with seed trees 

 on about 200 feet centers still standing, but the trees on the 20 and 30-year 

 stands were not nearly so straight as with the planted sections of the majority 

 of the German kiefer forests. 



The physical characteristics of kiefer are mucli the same as the Sylvester 

 pine of France. It will reach 70 to 80 feet high and 18 to 20 inches diameter 

 if allowed an 80-year revolution ; all the upper third of it has a sort of reddish- 



