STRIP SOWING. 253 



cial struggle for existence that forces them up in height, prunes 

 their boles naturally, and produces clean, straight, sound timber. 



But, all points considered, the only four cases in which the 

 adoption of the method may be justified are 



(i) When the soil is apt to be overrun with a dense mass of 

 tenacious invasive weeds. 



(ii) When the area to be sown has just been under field crops 

 or has been prepared for them, so that the soil is already in a very 

 high, if not complete, state of preparation for the sowing of forest 

 seeds. 



(iii) When one or two field crops can be taken off the ground, 

 in which case the cost of preparing the soil would be, to a great 

 extent or entirely, or even more than, recouped by the sale of the 

 field crops, while the forest seedlings themselves could be raised 

 simultaneously with those crops and be protected by them during 

 the most tender stage of their existence. 



(iv) When small areas of a hundred square yards or so are to 

 be sown up. 



ARTICLE 5. 



STRIP SOWING. 



In this, as in all the following methods, only a part of the entire 

 area is cultivated and sown. Here the ground is cultivated in 

 narrow, more or less parallel, equidistant and continuous strips, the 

 uncultivated intervals being much wider than the strips. 



1. Direction of the strips. 



The vegetation standing on the uncultivated intervals will afford 

 considerable protection to the young plants in the strips against 

 frost, excessive insolation, winds and erosion, and the effectiveness 

 of the protection will depend on the direction in which the strips 

 run. 



DIRECTION FOR FROST ALONE. In the case of continuous frost 

 that direction would be the best which gave the plants the fullest 

 benefit of the sun's influence. During the season of frosts, the sun. 

 is low down in the south. Strips running N. E. and S. W r . would 

 be warmed by it throughout the afternoon (when it is most power- 

 ful) until it set, and would therefore never cool down to such an 

 extent as strips running in any other direction, particularly that 

 joining the eartern and western points of the compass. Where 

 only night-frosts prevail, the morning sun must in any case be 

 avoided, and here again a north-easterly direction would be the 

 best : while it would protect the young plants from the morning 



