20 The yoiunial of Forestry. 



comprise the preparation of land intended to be planted, by enclosing 

 it, draining, trenching, or ploughing, accor(Jing as the situation and 

 circumstances of the case require. The process of barking and 

 harvesting bark will also occupy much of the earlier weeks of summer; 

 and the repair of plantation enclosures, switching, and cleaning, by 

 digging or forking round the roots of hedges, are other important 

 tasks proper for the summer season, but unfortunately too often 

 considered as unremunerative. And although we have insisted par- 

 ■ticularly upon attention to the duties more properly falling within 

 tlie plantations themselves, supervision of nursery-ground operations 

 should, not be wholly neglected by the skilled woodman. The value 

 of a small home nursery for aiding the forester in carrying out 

 several of the incidental summer duties is great, by placing at his 

 command, and within his reach, the materials for immediate use in 

 filling any gap, or for the transplanting out of evergreen shrubs during 

 the cloudy weather, at a time when such subjects could not safely be 

 conveyed from a distance. Another important advantage derived from 

 the possession of a home nursery at this season is that seedlings reared on 

 the estate, and in the climate in which they are afterwards destined to 

 grow, succeed better during their early years when planted out, than 

 two-year transplanted seedlings fetched from a distance, and probably 

 from a very different soil, climate, and altitude. This is particularly 

 the case with some of the rarer and newer coniferse, whose hardihood 

 during the early years of their introduction was considered uncertain. 

 Many of these, sown in home nurseries and afterwards planted out, 

 by being gradually acclimatised from the very first period of growth 

 have lived and thriven, when imported specimens of about one to two 

 feet in height, though healthy and thriving in the sites from which 

 they were brought, have failed, owing to the effects of late spring frosty 

 winds. It will therefore be necessary, where the importance of home 

 nurseries has led to their establishment, and the suggestion we have 

 made is adopted, that the summer operations therein should also 

 occupy the superintending eye of the forester. These, during this 

 season, will comprise the destruction of all weeds, hoeing and loosen- 

 ing the soil about the younger and more tender seedlings, thinning, 

 pinching out any double-headed shoots of the older plants, rubbing off 

 superfluous or misplaced buds, attending to grafts by untying or 

 fastening their bindings, as may be required, budding the more rare 

 ornamental trees — an operation now becoming so popular, and which 

 in most cases is best done about the month of July or early in August ; 

 — these, and other such minor tasks entailed by the existence of a 

 home nursery, will add to the summer work of the forester additional 

 interest and pleasure, and afford greater opportunities to the intelli- 

 gent mind of studying and observing many of the most beautiful and 

 instructive processes of Nature in her most secret economy. 



