WITH PLANTING OPERATIONS. 85 



things is the worst of management. However, upon 

 dry ground, this will seldom occur. If the day 

 should prove frosty, let the men he set to make pits 

 in a dry part of the ground — an operation which 

 should always be left for days of this nature ; hut 

 the superintendent should be most careful never to 

 allow a tree to be planted in such pits till the frost 

 has been properly thawed out of the earth ; to 

 plant a young tree among frozen earth will kill it 

 as certainly as if it had been put into boiling water : 

 therefore the* planter should always be extremely 

 careful to avoid this. 



In planting a piece of ground, if there be hard 

 wood to put into it, those should be all planted 

 first ; that is to say, previous to planting firs among 

 them. In order to save time, I very often cause a 

 few men to go on fiUing up the pits that have been 

 made with hard wood, in the proportions that may 

 be thought necessary as to the number of each 

 sort ; and immediately behind these I cause perhaps 

 twice the number of men employed in planting the 

 hard wood to follow them with the firs, filhng up the 

 ground to the requisite closeness as they proceed. 



The superintendent must go backward and for- 

 ward among the planters, minutely examining 

 their work ; in short, he must examine almost each 

 tree as it is put into the ground, whether it may 

 be done by the pitting or notching system, and see 

 that it is properly planted and made firm in the 



