78 ESSAY ON FUEL PLANTATIONS. 



tea or coffee plants, if the tap-root is over six inches, it is 

 almost certain to be turned up, and then it cannot possibly 

 grow. When the tap-root has been turned up, it may at 

 once be known and the tree picked out of a thousand. So 

 little is the question of the treatment of tap-roots under- 

 stood that a crude experiment made by a Sub-Conservator 

 in Bengal was actually sent down to the Madras Forest 

 Department as a kind of guide. The deduction arrived at 

 by the Sub-Conservator was, that " cutting tap-roots when 

 the plant was strong (query, large ?) was advisable, but if the 

 plant was weak (small ?) they should not be cut " ; if he 

 had added that the weakly plants should be thrown away, 

 he would have been right. There is no more fatal error 

 than putting out weak plants ; at the best they make but 

 indifferent trees. It is astonishing to see the number of 

 weakly seedlings that come up in a bed, though some care 

 may have been taken in securing good seed, especially 

 where seeds are small, such as cinchona or casuarina seeds. 



Concluding Remarks. 



In recommending the use of the transplanter, I have care- 

 fully considered its advantages over moss, baskets, peat 

 pots, flower pots and bamboos, indeed, have tried them all ; 

 but for simplicity, economy and certainty, nothing can equal 

 the transplanter. In using it, if the soil is light and dry, 

 a copious watering should be given to the beds, and the 

 earth round the plants pressed down, so that the earth 

 may not fall away from the roots. A native, in planting 

 out, if left alone, exemplifies the way of how not to do it. 

 First, he tears the plants out of the beds by main force ; 

 making them into a bundle, he grasps them by the roots, 

 any that he cannot hold, are carefully laid down in the sun ; 

 in planting he uses a dibble^grasps a plant out of the 

 bundle drawing the roots forcibly through his left hand, 

 places the root in the small hole made by the dibble, care- 

 fully turning up the tap-root as he does so, then stamps down 

 the earth on the top leaving the sides open thus the plant 

 is put out, and, I need hardly say, killed. With a trans- 



