134 ESSAYS ON THE BEST METHOD OF PLANTING 



beds, and, as each channel is filled brimful, the entrance 

 to it between the two beds to be watered is dammed up by 

 scraping a mamotie full of earth up agaiust the entrance. 

 The bed on either side is then moistened by the percolation 

 of the water through the sand of which it is mainly com- 

 posed. Any portions of a bed not wetted by the percola- 

 tion of water from the channels should be watered by a 

 galvanised iron watering pot with a very fine rose ; but it 

 is even better to use a small garden engine till the plants 

 are an inch or so high on account of the sand being washed 

 by too heavy a stream of water into ridges, which smother 

 some of the young plants and lay bare the roots of others. 

 A spray of any required degree of fineness can be produced 

 with the garden engine by placing the thumb over the 

 nozzle and breaking up the jet. 



When the plants are nine inches high, they should be 

 removed from the beds by means of a transplanter, an 

 instrument made of sheet iron of a semi-cylindrical shape, 

 which takes up the young plant with a ball of earth round 

 the roots, and thus prevents the fibres of the roots being 

 broken or injured. The whole of the land having been 

 pitted with holes of 18" cube, the planting of the young 

 Casuarinas is next proceeded with. The gardener in charge 

 of the nursery, provided with a sufficient number of 

 transplanters, rapidly removes the plants from the nurseries 

 and hands over to a woman in attendance as many trans- 

 planters, filled with a plant each, as she can carry in a 

 basket. The woman proceeds to the pits to be planted, 

 where a man relieves her of her load and sends her back to 

 the nursery with the last lot of transplanters he has emptied. 

 A little girl now hands the transplanters with the plants, one 

 by one, to the man ; an assistant (boy) fills up the pit with 

 the best soil near, and the man thrusts the transplanter and 

 plant partially into the loose soil thrown in by his assistant, 

 and with his hands fills in the earth all round, and putting 

 two fingers of his left hand, one on each side of the stem 

 of the plant, with his right withdraws the transplanter. 

 Another woman should now follow with a watering can and 



