150 FOREST PLANTING. 



the weeds. The best way to keep the plantation clean, 

 and at the same time to secure a rapid growth, is to 

 manure the space between the rows and raise therein 

 potatoes, turnips, or other root-fruits which require a 

 good deal of cultivation during the summer. If this 

 system be practiced, there will be already in the 

 second year shoots so large as to allow a crop. Large 

 plantations, however, are commonly divided into three 

 to four fields (lots), of which one is cut every year. 

 This short rotation is preferred, because the rods when 

 young are more pliable than when grooving older. In 

 planting the cuttings, care should be taken, not to dis- 

 turb the callus, which had been formed at the bottom of 

 the cuttings during the time of their being bundled up 

 and covered with moist sand. They should be set at an 

 angle of forty-five degrees in the plant hole with the 

 eyes in an upward direction. Cuttings planted in this 

 way are much better packed in the ground by the set- 

 tling of the soil than when set straight up, and there is 

 nothing which hurts the growth of cuttings more than 

 becoming loose in the soil and being shaken by the 

 wind. See page 67. 



CHAPTER II. 



FOREST PLANTING ON MARSHY OR SWAMPY LANDS. 



There are many acres of bottom land along the rivers, 

 which, owing to their low situation, cannot be drained. 

 Upon them there soon appear sour grasses, reeds, 

 rushes and sedges, out of the decaying materials of 

 which and of other vegetable and mineral accretions 

 the bogs, marshes or fens and swamps are formed. 



