Planting and Sowing. 101 
tilizer in the shape of the ashes of burned sod. The 
method of growing pine seedlings and planting them 
at one to three years old was further developed by 
Butlar (1845), who introduced the practice of dense 
sowing in the seed beds. He also invented an ingenious 
planting iron or dibble, a half cone of iron, which was 
thrown by the planter with great precision first to 
make a hole and then to close it. This was improved 
by the addition of a long handle into the superior, 
well-known and much used Wartenberg planting dibble. 
At the same time (1840), Manteujfel devised the method 
known by his name of planting in mounds, which is es- 
pecially applicable on wet soils. 
It was not until 1840 that transplanting of yearling 
pines with naked roots became general. The wide- 
spread application of this latter system resulted in aban- 
doning to a large extent mixed growths, and led to pure 
pine forests, introducing thereby most intensively all the 
dangers incident to a clearing system which are avoided 
by the mixed forest: insects, frost and drought. 
A practice of planting spruce in bunches, originally 
twelve to twenty plants in a bunch, had been in existence 
since 1780. This practice increased until 1850, and is 
still in use in the Harz mountains and in eastern Prus- 
sia, although the bunches have been reduced so as to con- 
tain only from three to five plants, the object of the 
bunching being to make sure that one or the other of the 
plants should live. Much discussion as to the merits of 
this method took place between the old masters, Cotta 
favoring the small bunches upon the basis of a successful 
plantation of his own, Hartig and Pfeil opposing it but 
finally weakening. Since 1850, however, the practice of 
setting out single plants has become more general. 
