SUCCESSFUL SEA-SIDE PLANTING. 7 



year transplanted plants three years old. The ground 

 being dry, the plants were inserted in winter and 

 early in spring, by the hand-irons, or notch-system, at 

 the average of 9,400 per acre. 



" Little or no fencing was required, the plantations 

 being bounded by a vast extent of pure undulating 

 sand, with a surface abandoned to desolation, and 

 bearing only the wavy ripple of the wind, except 

 where a clump of bent grass (Ammophilla arundinacea) 

 here and there arose. The cost of plants and plant- 

 ing ranged from only nine to eleven shillings per 

 imperial acre. The plants advanced vigorously, and 

 with the exception of a few small spots where the 

 drifting of the sand either removed or overspread the 

 plants soon after their insertion, the plantation con- 

 tains no vacancies. On lifting and examining the 

 roots of some of the plants of both sorts, six years 

 planted, occupying pure sand, where no surface 

 herbage existed, it was found that they had furnished 

 themselves with tap-roots, which strike to a great 

 depth right underneath the plants ; but the greater 

 portion of their roots run horizontally, at a depth of 

 four inches under the surface of the sand, and extend 

 to a distance almost incredible many of the plants 

 of both sorts, during the six years, had acquired roots 

 upwards of twenty feet in length, which ramified into 

 numerous fibres ; and where the surface had remained 

 undisturbed, the depth of the roots was very uniform. 

 Nature thus adapts plants for emergencies. Neither on 

 a level nor slanting surface was there any instance of a 

 plant having perished by drought, or been removed 

 by the wind, after it had taken root for a few years. 

 The annual growth of both kinds of trees in these 



