144 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



possession of the soil in the hole first and then spread from 

 there into the adjacent soil. But the roots do not behave 

 like this at all, and the forester who plants in this way 

 defeats his purpose and causes his employer needless expense. 

 Every gardener of experience knows full well that in the 

 case of young trees the roots, in a soft open soil, strike down, 

 and the practice of lifting, root-pruning, and concreting, etc., 

 is based upon this well-known fact; these operations being 

 intended to prevent the roots going down and make them 

 spread out near the surface. Forest trees behave in exactly 

 the same way, particularly when young and newly planted, 

 and the wonder is that foresters have so long followed the 

 useless practice of wide pitting without discovering the fact 

 No matter how good the soil in the large hole may be, the 

 roots of the tree strike down to the bottom, and more readily 

 in soft than in hard soil. These facts may be verified in any 

 plantation. The young tree root behaves like the seedling, 

 as shown in Figure I. In fact, the tree wants but little from 

 the soil, and nothing is better known to planters than the 

 fact that, in young plantations, on good land even, of moderate 

 depth, the roots make straight for the subsoil beneath, and 

 after a few years are chiefly found there, permeating the poor, 

 rocky strata in all directions. What led us first ,to test the 

 wisdom of wide pitting, was the expense. According to 

 Brown and Grigor, digging the pits alone, by contract, costs 

 from fifteen shillings to twenty shillings or thereabout per 

 thousand where wages are low ; and we know estates in 

 England where thirty shillings was the price paid. These 

 figures may have to be nearly doubled before the trees are 

 planted and the holes filled in again, thus adding enormously 

 to the cost per acre. By the system of narrow pitting and 

 planting at the same time, we have had the work completed 

 for less than half the above price, viz., for twenty-two shillings 

 and sixpence per thousand, and this sum included the lifting 

 and sorting of the plants in the home nursery. In the two 

 cases the conditions were all equal. Grigor was a great 

 raiser of forest trees, and no one should have known better 

 that, apart from the objections to wide pitting stated above, 

 frequently transplanted trees from a nursery and of the right 

 age have practically no roots fit to spread. Not long since, 

 on a well-known estate, wide pits were made where a planta- 

 tion was to be, the trees having been ordered from a nursery. 

 We saw them being put in, and to all appearances there 

 was not a tree in all the many thousands delivered whose 



