240 
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 eooly here does plant a tree, 
excepting that lie 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 I’oots, 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 i\>ot formation and ram- 
ming induced this more rapidly than the orthodox method. 
The photograph showed '''VS clearly. The ranm _*d plants 
show a much more ext Ive 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 uot take 
place, as it can be straightened easily a& described, a.ud 
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. 
TEANG 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. 
