no BRITISH FOREST TREES 



ducing spruce forests artificially, but towards the beginning 

 of the present century planting, in place of being confined 

 merely to the filling up of blanks in sowings, became a rival 

 of the older method, and for the last fifty years it has been 

 the favourite system. Sowing, besides not always being so 

 successful, is on the whole not so very much cheaper than 

 planting that one can afford to overlook the difference of 

 two to four years' growth won for the future crop when 

 seedlings or transplants are utilised. But planting of spruce 

 has other advantages over sowing. Plantations suffer less 

 from rank growth of grass, run less risk of being lifted out 

 of the ground by frost, and also suffer less where large herds 

 of deer are maintained, whilst they can be opened earlier to 

 grazing ; they thrive as a rule better than young crops raised 

 from seed, and can be formed in autumn as well as in spring. 



The material for filling up the blanks in crops raised 

 from seed was formerly usually taken from reserve plots or 

 temporary nurseries prepared by sowing thickly in the pro- 

 portion of about 150 Ibs. of seed per acre actually sown. 

 By the time the seedlings were four or five years old they 

 could only be used in wisps of three to five, in place of 

 individually, as they had grown quite entangled, a method 

 that is even now intentionally practised under certain 

 circumstances, but which is hardly recommendable, as it 

 renders subsequent tending difficult, and interferes too often 

 with the normal development and the early selection of 

 predominating poles. 



The distances at which seedlings and transplants were 

 planted out in the great home of the spruce, the Harz 

 mountains of central Germany, has varied at different times. 

 At first plantations used to be made at 2\ feet x 2 \ feet, but 

 later on the plants were made to stand at from 3 feet x 3 feet 

 to 5 feet x 5 feet, the wider distances being preferred where 

 there was heavy snowfall ; recent experience in Germany 



