60 Germany. 
seed tests; the seedbeds are to be made as for carrots, 
dense sowings are to be thinned and the thinnings trans- 
planted into nursery rows, the seedbeds to be covered 
with moss and litter to protect them against heaving ; 
the question of cost he also discusses. The adapta- 
tion of plant material to different sites—conifers where 
oaks are not suitable—was also understood (Bavarian 
Forest Ordinance, 1683). 
As long as the old method of extracting the seed in 
hot stoves or ovens prevailed, conifer sowings gave but 
indifferent results. 
In the pine forests of Prussia during the second half 
of the 18th century the method of sowing the cones on 
large waste and sand barrens where the sun would make 
them release the seed was practised, and before Bre- 
montier had written his celebrated mémoire sur les 
dunes, sanddunes had been recovered with pine planta- 
tions in Germany in the manner which is still in vogue. 
The planting of conifers came into practice much later 
and then it was mostly done with wildlings. Opinions 
differing as to the value of sowing or planting, it was 
erroneously held until the 19th century that planting 
was less successful and too costly in comparison with the 
small harvest yield, which necessitated cheapness of 
operations. It was only towards the end of the 18th 
century that planting of pine was resorted to, but merely 
for repairing fail places in sowings and natural regener- 
tion, and then with a ball of earth (1779), using a 
hollow spade,—a costly method. The cost of a certain 
plantation in 1751 is reported as less than $3.00 per 
M., in 1770 as low as 70 cents per M. To cheapen the 
operations the labor was exchanged for wood, pasture or 
other materials or advantages. 
