THE FOREST NURSERY 241 



young trees may require protection against pests, such 

 as insects, birds, deer, and so on ; they require to be 

 carefully inspected for disease, such as the common 

 larch canker. All this class of protective work comes 

 under the category of " light " work. 



The above instances of the lighter parts of forestry 

 operations will serve to show that in certain directions 

 there is work which could be easily performed by 

 women ; work in fact, which they could do at least 

 equally as well as men, and on which it appears rather 

 a waste of labour to employ the latter. 



We will glance at the operations I have sketched 

 above in greater detail. 



The Forest Nursery. — In the nursery there is a 

 certain ainount of heavy work connected with trench- 

 ing the ground, and so on, which requires to be done 

 by men. This, however, only occurs at one season of 

 the year, and forms but a fraction of the work carried 

 on in the nursery. Once the heavy trenching is done, 

 the upper layer of soil requires to be broken up and 

 reduced to a fine consistency — light work which can 

 be done by women. In the spring, seed-beds are pre- 

 pared and seed sown. Seedlings, one or two-year-old, 

 are lifted out of past years' seed-beds and transplanted, 

 or lined out, in breaks. The trenching of these latter 

 areas will have been previously done by men, but the 

 work of lining out the seedlings at so many to the 

 yard in the line, and with a prescribed distance between 

 the rows, is work that can be done by women. Owing 

 to the fact that the latter are, as a rule, lighter-fingered 

 than men or youths, it is work that can be better and 

 more quickly performed by them. As the wage-bill 



