CHAP, viii.] Formation of Timber Crops 173 



(Pines, Birch, Aspen, Alder), should be planted out during 

 autumn with balls of earth attached to their roots, or even 

 tumped on mounds if the soil is actually moist. For, as Hartig 

 well remarks * : 



' When trees or shrubs are planted out in any year and their natural 

 process of development has been so much interfered with that the new 

 shoots are not thoroughly developed by the time frost sets in, i. e. that 

 the process of forming woody tissue has not been properly completed, 

 such plants possess an abnormal disposition towards damage from frost. 

 They may hold out mild winters ; but, if severe cold occurs, the plants 

 may be killed outright.' 



On all soils that are merely fresh and of a light, mild con- 

 sistency the happy mean between loose and stiff, neither 

 apt to become too heated nor too rapidly cooled, and having 

 no immoderate tendency towards rank growth of weeds 

 sowing is principally adopted, as also on rocky, stony outcrops 

 where there is hardly sufficient soil for the proper carrying out 

 of planting operations. 



On the continent, sowing was formerly most generally 

 practised, and it was not until the introduction, on an extensive 

 scale, of the method of total clearance with artificial reproduc- 

 tion, that the present preference for planting became general 

 abroad. In Scotland, the total destruction of the Pine woods, 

 originally clothing vast extents of mountain sides now barren, 

 naturally led to the artificial formation of forests wherever the 

 proprietors desired to grow timber. And, in the vast majority 

 of cases, the conditions of soil and situation raw northern 

 climate, rank growth of heather, heath, and other weeds, and 

 deterioration of the surface-soil by long exposure to the effects 

 of sun and wind naturally pointed to planting as the best, 

 and often the only, means of attaining the object in view. 

 Good nursery seedlings, and especially sturdy transplants, must 

 have fewer difficulties in establishing themselves than tender 

 seedlings are exposed to in germinating on the area and over- 



1 Op. /., p. 15. 



