A VISIT OF THE THURINGIAN FOREST. Hail 
years old, are lifted and laid in nursery lines, being thickly set in 
rows 14 inches between, and the following year they are planted 
in their permanent sites, 
PLANTING. 
The ordinary course pursued is to plant in nearly straight lines 
the long way of the cleared ground, the lines being from 3 to 4 
feet apart. Along these lines little pits are dug (of a like 
distance apart, centre to centre), a foot, or even less square. 
The top soil is removed, and neatly laid on one side, and the 
under soil on the other; part of the top soil is then placed in 
the bottom of the pit, and from 3 to 5 plants set on it. The 
remainder of the top or good soil is put round the rootlets, and 
the operation is completed by the under soil being placed upper- 
most, and the whole deftly pressed down by the foot. Thus, 
instead of using, as we do, from 3000 to 5000 plants per acre 
inserted by the notch system, we find the Thuringian forester 
putting in 103 to 154 thousand by the method just described. If 
was informed that, on account of drought in early summer, all the 
plants in a pit oceasionally die (if one survive it is considered 
sufficient), but the ground is carefully gone over the following 
season, and blanks made good. 
It has already been indicated that the forest floor, from dense 
canopy, is almost entirely devoid of vegetation. Then, after the 
final cutting of old wood, several years elapse before the cleared 
ground becomes covered by the natural herbage of the district, 
but even this covering does not last long, for in a few more years 
the young trees so thoroughly occupy the surface that scarcely 
any other green thing can retain a footing on it. 
There is no fencing to protect young plantations from the 
browsing herds of cattle, ete., belonging to the neighbouring 
villages. Instead of using so costly a means of protecting his 
trees of tender age, the forester fixes a pole of perhaps six feet in 
height, at each corner of the lately planted area, having a few 
twigs tied to its upper end, and the owner of any destroying 
animal found within these bounds is Hable to be fined. So 
strictly, however, is this law adhered to and respected, that seldom 
has the fine to be imposed. 
Many tree-planters in this country will be surprised, as I confess 
I was, at the great number of plants used, but surprise approaches 
near to alarm when we come to examine the practice of thinning, 
