DIRECT SOWING AND PLANTING COMPARED. 825 



V- Special extraneous causes of destruction. 



We may say generally that seeds have more enemies than seed- 

 lings, and that young seedlings run greater risks than older plants, 

 which are at the same time more tenacious and resisting. Hence 

 in respect especially of such causes of destruction, planting stands 

 superior to direct sowing. A species that could otherwise be sown 

 successfully, may have to be planted, because either the seed or the 

 very young seedling is the favourite food of animals abundant in 

 the locality. 



VI. Quality and quantity of labour available. 



Planting always demands more skill, closer supervision and 

 greater care than sowing, and it must be accomplished within a 

 much more limited time (see p. 284, para. 2). Consequently 

 success in planting depends on the possibility of obtaining a suffi- 

 ciently large trained body of careful workmen at a moment's 

 notice, and this in proportion to the unfavourableness of the pre- 

 vailing conditions of vegetation. 



VII. Mode of development of the crop. 



It is a fact proved by experience that a forest formed entirely of 

 transplants seldom attains the same height as one raised directly 

 from seed. The transplants, having been carefully raised and se- 

 lected, and being, when put down, all of one and the same age and 

 more or less the same size and istrength, start up all together with 

 more or less equal vigour and, as they grow up, keep more or less 

 on a level with each other, so that there are no smaller neighbours 

 to push up the taller and more promising individuals without nar- 

 rowing and weakening their crowns by lateral pressure. The 

 consequence is that the useful stage of the struggle for existence 

 is not only necessarily a brief one, but must perforce be still further 

 shortened by the forester himself in order to relieve the victors at 

 once from the pressure of their all but equaUy-matched neighbours. 

 On the other hand, the more prolonged struggle in a sown crop 

 inevitably keeps back individual plants and results in diminished 

 production, unless the forester intervenes early and frequently and 

 maintains unchecked the growth of the stronger individuals, a task 

 easy enough in itself, but requiring large establishments and money. 



VIII. Early realization of marketable produce. 



In plantations, the plants used being already of a certain size 

 and strength, they are, from the ver}- beginning, given more crrow- 



