CONTINENTAL NOTES — GERMANY. 39 



cultures. The soil he used, in the first instance, was a fairly 

 fresh, deep sand, of mean fertility, overlaid by a dry, bilberry- 

 growing, peat. He sowed Scots pine separately in pure peat 

 and in pure sand. The growth of the seedlings in the peat 

 averaged 15 centimetres during the first, and 14'S centimetres 

 during the second year ; but in the sand they reached only 

 4'3 and 5 centimetres respectively. It will at once be under- 

 stood that this experiment is of purely scientific value only, for 

 in practice malgermination and drought would almost invariably 

 render sowing on pure dry peat futile. 



Moeller next mixed dry peat and sand in varying proportions, 

 and in every instance found that sowings on this mixture were 

 satisfactory. By an ingenious arrangement with lamp glasses, 

 one of which was filled with peat the other with sand, he proved 

 that the roots of the young plants would always follow the 

 former. He also changed plants from sand to peat, and vice 

 versa ; and by the results he demonstrated that the frequently 

 expressed belief that plants intended for poor soils should be 

 raised under similar conditions is untenable. 



Stress has often been laid on the existence of numerous 

 varieties of raw humus and dry peat ; and on the strength of 

 this it has been argued that, though some of them might be 

 harmless and even useful, others were inimical to arborescent 

 vegetation. Dr Moeller obtained a fairly large consignment of 

 the admittedly worst description of dry peat from the Luene- 

 burger Heide, which, in its place of origin, had been under a 

 cover of Polytrichum, Leucobryum, Calluna, Arctosiaphylos, 

 Molinia, Vaccinium Myrtillus, and Vaccinium vitis idcea ; but 

 the experiments made with this gave results no less favourable 

 than those with other varieties of peat considered to be of a 

 milder character. 



Amongst other experiments in the forest garden, Dr Moeller 

 planted a few equally developed three-year-old Scots pine, some 

 in unprepared sand, and others in sand richly and repeatedly 

 manured with dry peat; the results, as regards the best plant 

 in either case, were recorded as follows : — 



