102 PROTECTION OF WOODLANDS. 



are likely to migrate, and the encircling of such nurseries with 

 sufficiently deep protective ditches, whose walls should be as 

 nearly perpendicular as possible, and along whose bottom pots 

 full of water should be let into the ground, at suitable distances 

 apart. Even surrounding seed-beds in autumn with a girdle or 

 band of asphalt-paper 4 to 8 inches in breadth, held upright in the 

 ground by short wooden pegs, has proved of great use, whilst 

 smearing the bark of the little stems of the more valuable species 

 of trees with asphalt-tar has also proved a protection against 

 gnawing. For this last-named purpose Altum recommends the 

 use of the patent tar or glue employed against some kinds of 

 caterpillars (vide note on page 126). 



If mice are at all numerous, the sowing of acorns or beech- 

 nuts should not be carried out until spring, the mast being 

 stored throughout the winter in protected places. Covering the 

 seed-beds with tanning bark and Spruce twigs, and besprinkling 

 of the acorns with finely chopped Juniper twigs before they receive 

 the soil-covering on the seed-beds, have also proved efficacious. 

 The formation of ditches with steep walls along the edge of fields, 

 whence immigration is to be feared in autumn, has likewise been 

 tried with more or less successful results. 



But finally, especially in young Beech woods apt to suffer 

 severely from gnawing, the laying down upon the ground of young 

 stoles, stool-shoots, and advance growth of soft-woods, or any othe 

 species of trees, and of brushwood from the parent standards 

 when felled, is often a very good means of protecting the younj 

 seedling growth. For their own convenience, the mice prefer 

 gnaw material lying on the ground to what is still standing 

 upright, whilst at the same time the buds of the Beech twi< 

 afford them a very toothsome nourishment, in the enjoyment of 

 which their likelihood of doing damage is materially diminished, 

 and occasionally, indeed, entirely obviated. When such material 

 is collected in heaps throughout young crops which are specially 

 exposed to danger, the mice congregate in large numbers in their 

 neighbourhood, enjoying both their shelter and the nourishment 

 offered by them ; an exceptionally good opportunity is thus also 

 given for poisoning the mice with wheat soaked in a solution of 

 strychnine or phosphorus, and laid in drain -pipes scattered loosely 

 in the vicinity of the heaps. Great caution is, however, always 

 necessary in the use of poison. 



