NURSERY AND PLANTING. 



103 



be sown thicker, as a considerable number, to a certainty, will 

 prove abortive, having been bruised in the operation. 



When the seeds are sown, they should be covered to the 

 depth of a quarter of an inch, and previously to their beingcover- 

 ed, a light wooden roller should be drawn over them to press 

 the seeds firmly into the bed, as well as to place them all at an 

 equal depth. While in the seed-beeds, larches should be care- 

 fully and frequently weeded, for, if once overgrown with weeds, 

 they will seldom do much good, at least for one season to come, 

 however well they may afterwards be kept. This rule is ap- 

 plicable to all seedling plants, and cannot be too often, nor yet 

 too strongly recommended. 



In one season after sowing, the young larches will, if all 

 circumstances have been favourable, have attained a sufficient 

 size for transplanting ; but, as it is often desirable to have a 

 number of two-year old seedlings, we would therefore propose 

 selecting the strongest plants of the one-year old seedHngs, 

 which may be done with safety, if a little care be taken in the 

 operation ; and when they are taken up, they should be imme- 

 diately again planted in nursery-lines, and are henceforth 

 called transplanted trees, to distinguish tliem from those 

 taken at once from the seed-bed, and planted out where 

 they are to remain. If they are to be transplanted in the same 

 nursery in which they have been reared fi'om seed, no more 

 ought to be drawn from the seed-bed on one day than it is 

 intended to plant before night, as nothing is so injurious to 

 young trees in general, as to pull them from the seed-beds and 

 leave them in the sheds, probably tied up in bundles, for a 

 week, or even a month, before they can be planted. This, 

 however, we often see done, and by those who ought to know 

 better, and is like many other methods which are erroneously 

 called by them saving of labour, but which is decidedly the 

 very reverse, and is always fraught with the most serious in- 

 jury to the plants. Larches, when transplanted into nursery- 

 lines, should be allowed at least twelve or fifteen inches be- 

 tween the lines, and from four to six in the line, and, during 

 their stay in the nursery department, should be kept clear of 

 weeds, &c. In regard to the size which the larch should be 

 when fit to plant out, where it is to remain for timber, or for 



