326 DIRECT SOWING AND PLANTING COMPARED. 



ing room than seedlings of the same size in direct sowings* The 

 consequence is that they maintain a more unhampered development 

 for a comparatively long time, a result towards which the fact of 

 their being all selected plant?, and therefore endowed with a high 

 degree of tenacity, also contributes very largely. In a direct sow- 

 ing, on the other hand, the struggle for existence not only begins 

 early, but goes on between plants of various heights and of various 

 degrees of vigour. Hence, although in a plantation the stems 

 taken collectively may attain a given stage of development earlier, 

 yet scattered individuals reach a marketable size earlier in a direct 

 sowing. Moreover, whereas in this latter numerous stems, especi- 

 cially those which overtop their neighbours, may at all ages be 

 removed without leaving any very perceptible or long-open gaps 

 in the leaf-canopy ; in the former, until a certain comparatively 

 advanced age has been reached, the component steins are nearly 

 of one and the same size and strength and there is seldom any real 

 reason for cutting out one individual rather than another, and not 

 only this, hut as the removal of any one from among them pro- 

 duces an opening in the leaf-canopy of the same size as the crown 

 taken out and, therefore, requiring some time to close up, there is 

 every inducement to delay the first intermediate felling. Lastly, 

 the early produce furnished by a crop resulting from a direct sow- 

 ing generally consists of longer, straighter, and less branched and 

 knotty pieces than similar produce derived from a plantation, a no 

 small advantage in a country like India, in which there is such an 

 enormous demand for small poles for round rafters, and the hot 

 bright sun and several months of drought favour knotty growth* 



IX. Early formation of the desired type of forest. 



Planting will of course produce the desired crop sooner than 

 sowing, and the advantage in favour of the former will be all the 

 greater, the larger the plants put out are, the more slow-growing 

 in its earliest stages the species used is, and the more unfavourable 

 for tree-vegetation the prevailing conditions are. 



X. Object to be fulfilled. 



The object in creating a forest may be very various. Thus, it 

 may be to raise a few scattered trees as quickly as possible on 

 permanent pasture lands, in which case planting out the largest 

 material practicable under the given circumstances will be the only 

 advisable course ; or it may be to introduce, or increase the pro- 

 portion of, a given species in an already existing high forest, in 

 which case the choice between sowing and planting will depend on 



