CHOICE OF SITE. 



163 



supply vigorous plants well furnished with root fibres and with a 

 crown strong in proportion, and that soil is the best for his purpose 

 which produces such plants, whether it be like the soil of the forest 

 or not. 



Such plants, as we have just referred to, are neither the thin, 

 dry, starved seedlings that would come out of a poor soil, which 

 seedlings, possessing little vitality, must soon succumb under the 

 exaggeration of unfavourable conditions consequent on their being 

 put out in similar bad soil ; nor are they highly forced plants, 

 which being over-developed above ground, contain too large a pro- 

 portion of insufficiently lignified parts to possess tenacity enough 

 to survive a sudden change of conditions for the worse, and would 

 suffer very appreciably even in the mere transport and putting-out 

 operations. 



But even admitting, for the sake of argument, that seedlings 

 should be raised in soil similar to that of the forest where they are 

 to be put out, what is to be done if the soil there, as is nearly al- 

 ways the case in the enormous aggregate area a single permanent 

 nursery has to serve, varies from place to place ? How is the nur- 

 seryman to make his nursery, in respect of soil, so complete an 

 epitome of the proportionately immense area, for which he has to 

 raise planting material ? And how is it possible to expect the most 

 experienced workman who plants for us, to be able to put down at 

 every point seedlings coming from exactly similar soil ? Here we 

 evidently arrive at a reductio ad absurdum. 



But there is still another very important consideration to regu- 

 late the choice of soil. A permanent nursery is, by its very mean- 

 ing, intended for the raising of planting material belonging to a 

 variety of species, possessing, in the aggregate, very various re- 

 quirements, and consequently the soil should be such as to suit each 

 and all of those species as closely as possible. 



We are thus parforce led to choose a soil of medium quality, i.e. t 

 one that is neither too rich nor too poor, neither too wet nor too 

 dry, neither too stiff nor too free, in other words, a moist sandy 

 loam. If it should happen that a sandy loam is not available, then 

 it is better to select a really sandy soil than one which contains a 

 strong proportion of clay. Under the influence of drought a clayey 

 soil would cake at the surface, and would shrink and become creviced, 

 thereby rending asunder and killing the roots of the seedlings ; 

 while during frost it would swell up to such an extent as to leave 

 them ejected when it subsided on thaw occurring. The sterility 

 and want of sufficient cohesion of a sandy aoil can be easily cured 



