FOREST NURSERIES AND NURSERY METHODS IN EUROPE. 219 



These fertilizers are applied immediately after the plants are removed from the 

 nursery, which is generally done in April. They are mixed with the soil, after 

 which the ground is left undisturbed for two weeks. The beds are then made 

 and the seed is sown in them. Where the nitrogen in the soil has been lost 

 through washing and leaching, lupine is sown in the spring and left to grow until 

 September, when it is spaded under. 



The seeds in each row are placed thickly, nearly touching each other, in 

 a depression made by a square-edged slat two and one quarter inches wide. The 

 depression thus made is about three quarters of an inch in depth. The rows 

 are about four inches apart. The beds are forty inches (one meter) wide, 

 with intervening paths of one foot in width. For sowing an area of one are 

 (1,076 square feet) about seventeen and one half pounds of spruce seed is used. 

 The seeds are not soaked, but are coated with red lead to prevent the birds from 

 eating them. After sowing, the seeds are covered lightly with sand which has 

 been mixed with a compost made from leaves and grass. 



The beds are covered with low screens of brush, preferably pine, which are 

 left on the frame until the latter part of July. Water is not used for sprinkling 

 unless there is a supply conveniently at hand. 



Seedlings are left in the seed beds until they are two years old, when, as a 

 general rule, they are transplanted into other beds; but sometimes they are left 

 in the germinating beds until they are four years old, in which case they are 

 sent direct to the field plantation. The climate in the Erzgebirge, however, is 

 so unfavorable that the foresters deem it advisable, in general practice, to use 

 transplants. 



The expense of raising two-year-old seedlings in the Olbernhau Revier is from 

 one to two marks per thousand plants; to prepare the soil and transplant them 

 costs one and one half marks more per thousand; and to set them out in a 

 plantation, from ten to fifteen marks per thousand. 



Field planting by the seed-spot method, a modified form of nursery work, is exten- 

 sively practiced in Saxony, and plantations of this kind are made at Tharandt, the 

 seat of the Royal Forest Academy. The Saxon foresters generally sow the seeds 

 along the edge of the strip or patch, where they are not so liable to be heaved 

 or thrown out by frost. In the Erzgebirge, wherever this method is used, spruce 

 is not mixed with pine or larch as at Tharandt. At the latter place a mixture is 

 used to protect the spruce from the deer. A few seeds of pine and larch are 

 mixed with the spruce seed, and as the former have a more rapid growth, and 

 are preferred by the deer, the spruce remains uninjured. 



