FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 149 



ciently moist makes planting safe, and gives the roots of the seedlings a 

 better chance to attach themselves to the soil. This is much cheaper than 

 the temporary use of lath shade after transplanting in dry weather. 



We find we can increase the production of the nursery by transplant- 

 ing, especially tap root species, when one year old. In the Adirondacks 

 we must have very strong stock to succeed on the burned sand plains which 

 we are reforesting. Seedlings planted are simply a waste of money, because 

 they are unable to compete with the bramble growth and hardly ever 

 establish themselves. We must have strong transplants, and it is a question 

 of economy how to get the best with the least expenditure, and secure the 

 highest nursery production. Experiments along these lines have been 

 carried on. We find that one-year-old seedlings transplanted two years 

 are far larger and stronger plants than two-year-old seedlings transplanted 

 for one year. The former class are the best for field planting, because they 

 are better developed and can be removed from the nursery and finally 

 planted in the field at a much less cost than four-year-old transplants. I 

 believe they are decidedly better than four-year-old stock. I cannot say 

 that this would prove true for spruce or white pine, but we are going to 

 try to find out this also. 



Next to securing success in the work is keeping expenses at the lowest 

 possible point consistent wdth quality production. We keep our costs 

 down by an intensive system of nursery practice. We are bringing our soil 

 to higher productive capacity, and then we aim by quantity and quality 

 production to reduce costs. Density of product is not necessarily detri- 

 mental, provided each tree has all the soil, light, moisture and plant food 

 it can economically use. We carried on a series of experiments in seed bed 

 work to prove this very point. Scotch pine seed was sown in several beds, 

 the amount of seed varying in the different beds as follows: Six ounces, 

 seven ounces, eight ounces, nine ounces, ten ounces. When the seedlings 

 were two years old we found that we had over 10,000 in the bed where we 

 had sown eight ounces of seed, and that they were just as good as in the bed 

 where seven ounces were sown. We had just 1,500 more trees in the bed 

 where eight ounces had been sown, which in reality had not cost us any- 

 thing except about ten cents for the additional ounce of seed, because the 

 expense of caring for them had been the same. The bed in which eight 



