60 MODES OF FOREST PLANTING. 
worn to a circular form in the mouth, it cuts the herbage and 
penetrates easily into the ground. If spades of this descrip- 
tion are not at hand, new ones of a small size should be 
formed into the same figure and sharpened for the work. 
This spade is suitable in all rough ground where the heath is 
rank and forms a close cover ; or where heath is mixed with 
the mosses or other herbage, where the hand-iron is found too 
light for the operation. This mode of notching plants with 
the common spade is generally known as the “cross 
cut,” the shape of the incision being made thus— ——|- 
The surface soil being raised, the plant is inserted into the 
corner and the turf pressed down with the foot. The work 
is most speedily performed if a boy accompanies the spades- 
man, carrying the plants and inserting them. Notch planting 
with the common spade is sometimes practised by making 
only a single notch or incision, into which the plant is often 
inserted by the person who makes it; in this case the planter 
carries the plants in a bag or apron tied round his waist. 
The plants must be large in proportion to the herbage they 
have to contend with. Transplanted plants should always be 
used. Two-year-old seedlings which have been one year 
transplanted of larch, and Scotch pine, or two-year trans- 
planted spruce, are all fit for being notched with the common 
spade where herbage of the sort referred to overspreads a soft 
soil; but the preparation necessary for each spot where a 
plant is to be inserted depends on the nature of the ground 
and on the vigour of the herbage, as will be afterwards 
explained. 
Moorland Plantations, cost, ete.—In forming plantations on 
this description of ground, in elevated situations, Scotch pine, 
larch, and spruce are the kinds most profitably grown. If 
the exposure is rough and bare, 5000 plants are sometimes 
judiciously employed per imperial acre, although that number 
places the plants rather less than three feet apart. If, on the 
other hand, the ground is such as is reckoned sure for the 
plants to take root in, and the altitude low, or, if at a high 
