CHAPTER V 

 PLANTING AND NATURAL REGENERATION 



PLANTING. 



THE practice of planting or transplanting trees from one 

 site to another is a very ancient one. It is dealt with in 

 the Greek and Eoman classics, and is probably as old as any 

 branch of agriculture or horticulture. But, regarded from a 

 forestry point of view, it cannot be said that any evidence 

 exists of it having been carried out on anything but a 

 limited scale until comparatively modern times. During the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the practice of planting went 

 under the name of " setting," and young trees or plants were 

 known as "sets." The term still survives in the word 

 " quick-set," usually applied to a hedge composed of thorns or 

 quicks, and probably first used to distinguish such hedges 

 from the more common ones, composed of dead bushes or 

 branches, which were universal when enclosures were only of 

 a temporary nature. But although the name only survives 

 in connection with thorns, there is little reason to doubt that 

 it was applied to the planting or sowing of all trees, plants, 

 or seeds ; and there is nothing surprising, therefore, in the 

 scanty references to planting in the works of the older 

 writers, and which might possibly be taken as evidence that 

 the practice was quite a modern one. 



As understood at the present day, the word " planting " 

 signifies the removal of young trees from the nursery or seed- 

 bed in which they have been raised from seed, and replanting 

 them upon the site on which it is desired that they should 

 establish themselves and develop into large trees. This work 

 may deal with trees of only a year or two old, or what are 



