CONTINENTAL NOTES — GERMANY. 



47 



and pressed flat. It is evident that such planting requires a 

 certain amount of skill, which, however, experience has shown, 

 is easily acquired in a few days, especially by women. If 

 considered advisable, a very simple instrument may be used for 

 holding the plant in the middle of the plant-hole and at the 

 right height. This is naturally much safer, but slows down the 

 rate of planting to some extent, and thereby adds four to five 

 shillings per hectare to the cost. The roots 

 are by this method of planting placed in 

 their natural position, and though the 

 longer ones may hang down a little, which 

 is unavoidable, experience has shown that 

 they begin at once to grow upwards and 

 outwards, and that, even in the first year, 

 the whole root-system has penetrated the 

 walls of the bore hole. 



It has been observed that seedlings thus 

 planted, frequently, in the first instance, 

 devote their main energy towards the develop- 

 ment of their root-system, and for this reason 

 do not show immediately appreciable pro- 



FlG. I. 



»^r^ 



-^: 



/ 1 



Figs. 



3 4 



gress above ground. In many instances the first eff^orts of a 

 notch-planted seedling are more evident in this direction, but 

 there is no comparison in the second and third years. The 

 accompanying sketches show three-year-old seedlings, drawn to 

 scale: — i, planted with the Rohrwieser borer, the best soil 

 obtainable from the bore hole being used, but no special 

 manure being added ; 2, 3, 4, notch-planted in the same locality. 

 In the forest division Rohrwiese, in West Prussia, planting 

 with the borer has gone on for seven years, and practically no 

 repairs have been needed. The operations are very extensive, 

 aggregating some 85 hectares per annum ; and as they are 

 carried out on a great variety of soils, ranging from loose 

 moving sands to loam, penetrated by beech and hornbeam 



