736 XLVI. VERBENACEAE 



of 12 ft. by 3 ft. and 9 ft. by 4 ft. were common ; the plants are thus fairly 

 close together along definite lines, and weeding is facilitated, but the canopy 

 takes longer to close up than in 6 ft. by 6 ft. spacing. In the Tharrawaddy 

 plantations of 1876 and 1877 belts of teak consisting of three lines 6 ft. apart, 

 each belt separated by an unplanted strip 30 ft. wide, were tried ; in 1878 

 Avider belts were formed, eight lines 6 ft. apart being planted, and unplanted 

 strips 30 ft. wide being left between the belts. This system was apparently 

 found unsatisfactory, as it was discontinued. 



In the Nilambur plantations a spacing of 6^ ft. by 6| ft. has been the 

 ceneral rule ; a spacing of 6 ft. by 6 ft. was adopted for a time prior to 1904, 

 but it was afterwards decided to plant with a spacing of 8 ft. by 8 ft. on first- 

 class soils and 6 ft. by 6 ft. on second-class soils. Wide spacing, however, has 

 now been given up, and the rule in recent years has been to j)lant 6| ft. hj 

 Qh ft. on soils of good quality, and 6 ft. by 6 ft. on soils of poorer quality. 

 Although wide spacing is more economical than close planting, reckoning the 

 cost of planting an acre at a given rate per plant, at Nilambur it is said to 

 have resulted in a fair proportion of the trees being forked at a height of 20 to 

 25 ft. from the ground. Mr. P. M. Lushington, again, notes that the extra 

 cost of close planting at Nilambur is recovered from the first thinnings, and 

 that close spacing has a great advantage in producing straight clean stems. 

 Another result of wide spacing is that weedings have to be continued longer, 

 and give more trouble, than in the case of close planting, so that expenditure 

 saved in the cost of formation has to be added to the cost of tending. This 

 was found to be the case in Coorg, where a spacing of 10 ft. by 10 ft. was tried 

 at one time, but was discarded owing to the trouble given by weeds. In 

 Travancore a spacing of 15 ft. by 15 ft. was tried during the first few years of 

 plantation work, but this was afterwards discarded for a spacing of 5 ft. by 

 5 ft. or 6 ft. by 6 ft. 



Preparation of seed. In most parts of India it is customary to subject teak 

 seed to some form of preliminary preparation in order to hasten germination, 

 without which the seed is found to lie dormant for a year. Provided the seed 

 is sown well before the early showers preceding the monsoon, such preparation 

 is not always necessary ; it is not ordinarily resorted to in Burma, and the 

 results are all that can be desired. In India many different plans are adopted. 

 At Nilambur soaking for 48 hours before sowing in the nursery is found to 

 give good results ; the soaking is effected by placing sacks of seed in running 

 streams. Exposing the seed to the weather for a whole year in the open has 

 been found successful in Bombay. In Kanara seed sown in beds early in 

 April, and watered daily until the rainy season, has been found to germinate 

 fairly well, though some of the seeds lie dormant for a year. Mr. L. S. Osmaston ^ 

 has described a method which has given uniformly excellent results in Satara, 

 where the rainfall is about 24 in. A hole large enough to hold all the seed is 

 dug in April in a sunny spot, filled with seeds, covered with a layer of earth 

 1 in. thick, and thoroughly drenched with water every third day for six weeks. 

 The seed is then taken out and spread in the sun for three weeks, by which 

 time the rainy season is about to commence, when the seed is sown and germina- 

 tion takes place readily. Another plan, successfully tried in Surat, is to 



1 Ind. Forester, xxxiv (1908), p. 534. 



