DIBBLING AND NOTCH SOWING. 247 



ARTICLE 2. 

 Dibbling. 



Description of the method. — In this method a hole is made 

 with a dibber CFigs. 82, 83 and 84) and a seed or two are dropped 

 in and covered to the right d&pth. The holes should be made in 

 a regular manner, along straight parallel equidistant lines, in order 

 both to ensure uniformity of sowing and to facililate the actual 

 carrying out of the work and the subsequent supervision and con- 

 trol. The holes may be made either singly at equal distances apart 

 or in uniform groups of two or more together with equal intervals 

 between two consecutive groups. Whatever the arrangement, 

 there ought generally to be from about six to nine holes per square 

 yard. After the seed has been dropped in, the hole should be 

 filled up by pressure with the foot or fingers, or by scraping soil 

 into it from the edges, or better still, if practicable, by putting in 

 manure. 



Value and employment of the method.: — This system is evi- 

 dently an improvement on the preceding. In the first place, it 

 requires less seed, and, in the second place, the mode of sowing 

 the seeds protects them to a very great extient against harmful 

 external influences and gives them some sort of a bed, whereby the 

 development o'f the taproot is favoured and the vigour and tenacity 

 of the seedlings remarkably increased. Hence it will succeed not 

 only wherever the other has any chance of success, but also in 

 places in iVhich the latter would completely fail. Its employment 

 requires a more or less loose and moist soil, free fiom powerful and 

 invasive weeds, and a species that naturally develops a strong 

 taproot. It is well adapted for filling up small blanks in a forest 

 and for introducing or extending a given species under the cover 

 of a more or less open standing crop of old trees. 



ARTICLE 3. 

 Notch sowing. 



Description of the method. — In this method an oblique 

 notch is made in the soil with a spade or hoe, one or more seeds 

 are dropped in with or vsdthout manui'a, and the notch closed over 

 them with the pressure of the foot. The notches should of course 

 be arranged in lines, but as several seeds can be sown in a single 

 notch, there is never any necessity to make them in groups. The 

 notches may consist of a single cut each or they may have the 

 form of a T. In cross-cut sowing, as this latter system is called, 

 the best place for the seed is generally the junction of the two 



