122 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



CHAPTER IX. 

 SEASON TO PLANT FOREST TREES. 



Conifera Hardwoods. 

 SECTION I. CONIFERA. 



No question connected with forestry has exercised the minds 

 of foresters and their employers more than this. Which is 

 the best season for transplanting spring or autumn has been 

 a much debated subject The vague meaning generally 

 attached to the terms " spring " and " autumn," the frequent 

 failures at all seasons, often from causes not attributable to the 

 seasons at all, and the mistake of treating evergreen and 

 deciduous species alike, has been at the bottom of much of the 

 difference of opinion that exists. Writing on this subject in 

 his " Theory and Practice of Horticulture," and on the failures 

 and successes of planters, Dr. Lindley says that transplanting 

 is too generally practised as an empirical art and taught 

 dogmatically. " One hardly knows," he observes, " how to 

 draw any other conclusion from the opposite opinions held by 

 planters, and the dogmatical manner in which they are too 

 often expressed" In discussing the planting of evergreen 

 and deciduous trees, Lindley lays stress on the fact that exces- 

 sive evaporation from the foliage, thereby overtaxing the 

 mutilated roots and causing the plant to wither up and die, is 

 the chief danger to be feared quoting with approval from 

 McNab the words " half a day's sun in the spring and autumn 

 will do more harm immediately after planting than a whole 

 week's sun from morning to night in the middle of winter." 

 The reply to the last argument is, that experience has shown 

 that the sun of autumn and spring is infinitely preferable to 

 the cold of winter, for all kinds of conifers at least. Foresters 

 hitherto have generally recommended the months of Novem- 

 ber, December, February, March, and April, which, with the 

 exceptions of April and the end of March, are the worst 

 months in the whole year. All the species of conifera may be 



