Planting and Sowing. 101 



tilizer in the shape of the ashes of burned sod. The 

 method of growing pine seedlings and planting them 

 at one to three years old was further developed by 

 Butlar (1845), who introduced the practice of dense 

 sowing in the seed beds. He also invented an ingenious 

 planting iron or dibble, a half cone of iron, which was 

 thrown by the planter with great precision first to 

 make a hole and then to close it. This was improved 

 by the addition of a long handle into the superior, 

 well-known and much used ^Yartenberg planting dibble. 

 At the same time (1840), Manteuffel devised the method 

 known by his name of planting in mounds, which is es- 

 pecially applicable on wet soils. 



It was not until 1840 that transplanting of yearling 

 pines with naked roots became general. The wide- 

 spread application of this latter system resulted in aban- 

 doning to a large extent mixed growths, and led to pure 

 pine forests, introducing thereby most intensively all the 

 dangers incident to a clearing system which are avoided 

 by the mixed forest : insects, frost and drought. 



A practice of planting spruce in bunches, originally 

 twelve to twenty plants in a bunch, had been in existence 

 since 1780. This practice increased until 1850, and is 

 still in use in the Harz mountains and in eastern Prus- 

 sia, although the bxmches have been reduced so as to con- 

 tain only from three to five plants, the object of the 

 bunching being to make sure that one or the other of the 

 plants should live. Much discussion as to the merits of 

 this method took place between the old masters, Cotta 

 favoring the small bunches upon the basis of a successful 

 plantation of his own, Hartig and Pfeil opposing it but 

 finally weakening. Since 1850, however, the practice of 

 setting out single plants has become more general. 



