Periodical Literature. 311 



a steel road plow intended for opening streets answered the pur- 

 pose. This plow, specially described, capable of cutting through 

 3-inch roots and throwing out 16-inch rocks, makes a balk of 

 lO-inch width, as deep as desired to 16 inches, and worked even 

 on 30° slopes with four oxen or two horses. 



With the ox team, including the driver, at $4 per day, and the 

 man at the plow at 62 cents, nearly one day was required to throw 

 up the thirty furrows 4 feet apart on one acre, say $3.60 per acre 

 (which for us would have to be doubled). The planting was 

 done in the following spring on the disintegrated soil easily with 

 cheap labor with 3-year-old spruce at the rate of about 3,000 to 

 the acre on the balks formed by the sod from the plow furrows at 

 a cost of less that $3 per M, so that the total cost of the plantation 

 per M came to a little over $4, or between $12 and $13 per acre, 

 28% less than formerly. 



In 2 to 3 years the depression between the balks vanishes. 



The most important result, however, the writer finds in the 

 superior growth of the plants so that in two years they had out- 

 grown the 5-year-old ones set out without the plow furrows, not 

 to mention their more vigorous looks, growing like transplants in 

 the nursery, shoots in the second year of 12 to 16 inches being 

 no rarity. 



Fail places were found of hardly 1% as against 10% in former 

 plantings. 



The author then enlarges at great length on the changes in the 

 soil which result from fall plowing. 



Die Behandlung feuchter Lettcnhoden im Walde. Forstwissenschaft- 

 liches Centralblatt, February, 191 1. Pp. 91-100. 



It is curious reading to us that scarcity of 

 Machine labor in Germany is forcing the employ- 



Sowing. ment of machines in silviculture operations. 



Forstmeister v. Schmittburg working in 

 Hesse found it impossible to secure the necessary labor for plant- 

 ing, not to speak of the high price demanded. He found himself 

 forced to substitute machinery, partly self-invented, and devise 

 a process which would work cheaply and efficiently. 

 Planting hitherto had not cost less than $50 per acre ! 

 He had to return to sowing for the hitherto practiced planting 

 of yearling pines, using specially constructed machines and fer- 



