76 ESSAY ON FUEL PLANTATIONS. 



others it is a necessity. The soil, the situation, the climate, 

 the habit of the tree, all go to show, why in one place the 

 tree requires a tap-root and in another place can dispense 

 with it. When seeds are planted in situ and cannot be 

 watered on account of the expense, it is evident they must 

 depend entirely on their roots for nourishment, and to gain 

 moisture one or more of their roots must be plunged deep 

 into the earth beyond the action of the sun's rays. Let us 

 take the tamarind tree for an example. Nature has furnished 

 it with a powerful tap-root to enable it to exist in dry places. 

 Very frequently, the tap-root will be nearly a yard long 

 when the head of the plant is not six inches high. To expect 

 to lift a plant with a root so long is simply hopeless, it must 

 be damaged more or less. If, when the plant is lifted, the 

 tap-root is shortened by a clean cut, and the plant put back 

 into a bed and watered, it rapidly makes lateral roots and 

 is then fit for lifting with the transplanter. When put out 

 in the pit, it must be watered if the situation is dry and the 

 rains cannot be depended on for any length of time. It is 

 otherwise in moist places, where the rains can be depended 

 on for weeks. In such places cuttings of trees thrust in 

 the ground root freely. No one thinks of watering tea, 

 coffee, cinchona, teak, or eucalyptus plants, because they 

 are put out under favorable circumstances ; but where the 

 conditions are unfavourable, we must water or trust entirely 

 to nature by planting the seeds in situ and leaving the tap- 

 root to do its work. Many seeds, if planted in sandy soil or 

 fibrous peaty soil, do not throw out a single tap-root at all but 

 a number of lateral roots, provided the ground is kept moist. 

 I have known tea plants in one bed full of peat throw out 

 any amount of lateral roots, and in an adjoining bed where 

 the clay was near the surface, eq^d down one single tap-root 

 like a carrot. The roots in the first bed found a soil suit- 

 able for supplying food to many roots, in the second case 

 the plant had to send down a single long tap-root to get 

 food as there was none near at hand. It is a well estab- 

 lished fact that the tap-root after three or four years ceases 



