ARTIFICIAL PLANTING 43 



that is planting by the notch system, have had at 

 least as much to do with the subsequent poor develop- 

 ment of the crops and the catastrophic windfalls (which 

 have been the usual results of bad storms in the past) 

 as either the soil, species used, or other local factors. 

 Of course the haphazard methods of felling and planting, 

 with no reference to wind and the direction of the 

 prevailing storms, under which woods, which have 

 grown up in the shelter of neighbouring ones, are 

 suddenly exposed by the removal of the latter, are 

 also a fruitful source of windfalls. 



The plantations will be mostly formed artificially, 

 i.e. by planting in the plants, although there is no 

 doubt that in some parts of the country woods under 

 proper scientific management could be obtained by 

 natural regeneration (vide Plate 9) . Artificial planting 

 is usually done by one of four methods: (a) Dibbling, (b) 

 Notching, (c) Pit planting, and (d) Mattock planting ; 

 and tools of a varying nature are used for the purpose. 



{a) Dibbling. — This method can only be adopted for 

 very small plants which have not as yet produced 

 strong side roots. A peg or dibbling iron is pressed 

 into the soil and moved backwards and forwards in one 

 plane to make a wedge-shaped hole in which the plant 

 is inserted, the peg then being pushed into the soil at 

 an angle a few inches away, and levered up so as to 

 force the wedge-shaped mass of soil thus disturbed 

 into the hole occupied by the roots of the plant, 

 which thus becomes filled up. The peg is then with- 

 drawn, the empty hole filled up by pushing the soil 

 into it with the boot or peg, and a fresh plant put in 

 at the planting distance. 



