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filled in with many precautions small quantities of fine soil 

 are worked in between the fine roots, hollow places between 

 the stouter roots filled in, the rest of the soil filled in and 

 trodden down. Experiments made in England by Mr. 

 Pickering show that this process is all wrong. The proper 

 way to plant a tree is to make a small hole double up the 

 roots anyhow and stick the tree in, throw in the soil and 

 ram it down as hard as if one were fixing a gate post. This 

 is really much the way that a cooly here does plant a tree, 

 excepting that he seldom does the ramming hard. The ex- 

 periments showed 59 per cent of the sets in favour of ram- 

 ming, 27 per cent showed no difference, and only 14 per 

 cent were against ramming. Examination of the trees 

 showed that ramming led to a copious development of 

 fibrous roots, and direct experiments showed that the 

 fibrous roots produced in the Nursery before lifting played 

 no important part as roots during the life of the tree. The 

 important thing is to induce fresh root formation and ram- 

 ming induced this more rapidly than the orthodox method. 

 The photograph showed this clearly. The rammed plants 

 show a much more extensive root system than the un- 

 rammed one. 



The experiment would be worth trying here with rub- 

 ber trees. It is probable that in many cases the coolies in 

 planting large quantities of plants out would not press the 

 soil firmly enough about the roots. It is an understood 

 thing that the soil should be stamped down on either side 

 of the tree before leaving it, but is this usually done at 

 least hard enough? The bending of the tap-root, so much 

 deprecated by the Editor in a recent paper, need not take 

 place, as it can be straightened easily as described, and 

 curiously the Photographs given (in nature from the 

 9th report of the Woburn experimental fruit farm by the 

 Duke of Bedford and Mr. S. W. Pickering) show in one 

 case either the tap-root or main-root from the tap-root in 

 an unrammed plant bent worse than in the figures of the 

 rammed plants. 



Ed. 



TRANG PEPPER. 



About ten years ago when in Perak" I went on a trip to 

 Trang for the purpose of obtaining cuttings of the Trang 

 variety of pepper for experimental cultivation in the 

 government gardens of Perak at Kwala Kangsar. 



♦Before the publication of the new series of the Agricultural-Bulletin. 



