FUEL PLANTATIONS IN INDIA. 133 



300 more for failures, 1,500 in all per acre or for tlie 100 

 acres one lakh and 50,000. 



The seed should be sown in the beds in rows six inches 

 apart and one-eighth of an inch deep ; and as the seedlings 

 should be planted out when nine inches high, each row of 

 three and a half feet in length will only hold about 20 plants, 

 two inches apart. There will then be twenty-eight rows in a 

 fourteen feet bed--holding, by the above calculation, 560 

 plants. 



You will, therefore, require about 268 such beds for 

 150,000 plants for the 100 acres ; and if they are ranged in 

 eight rows of 33 beds each, allowing for a water-channel of 

 one foot between each bed and three feet between each of the 

 rows, your nursery will occupy 133 feet x 150 feet = 19,950 

 square feet ; and allowing 400 square feet for the well and 

 lift, a total of: 20,350 square feet, or half an acre, less 136 

 square yards say half an acre. 



The nursery should be surrounded by a stout fence, and 

 the cheapest and best is undoubtedly a sunk fence of four 

 feet in depth, wedge-shaped at the base, so that cattle cannot 

 get out and over into the nursery ; the inner edge of the 

 ditch should be constructed of green croton stems of three 

 inches in diameter by four feet high, or Erythrina (Q-P^SS 

 LLffin) posts four feet apart, the intermediate spaces being 

 carefully filled in with bamboo thorns lashed diagonally to 

 cross reapers of split bamboos. 



If the croton or Erythrina is put down at the beginning 

 of the rains, it will speedily root, and such posts are not 

 liable to the attacks of white ants as timber posts are. 



(N.B. Too much moisture rots Erythrina cuttings.) 



Croton seeds can then be planted at intervals of 4" all 

 round the fence on the inner edge, and when they have 

 grown up, a strong living fence will be formed. 



To water the nurseries, all that is necessary is to divert 

 the stream flowing from the picottah when it is worked 

 into the channels provided for the purpose between the 



