Chap. 12.] PROPAGATION BY SUCKERS. 463 



and he says that they should be steeped for three days in 

 diluted manure, or else the day before they are sown in honey 

 and water. 33 He says, also, that they should be put in the 

 ground with the point downwards, and the sharp edge towards 

 the north-east ; and that they should be sown in threes and 

 placed triangularly, at the distance of a palm from each other, 

 care being taken to water them for ten days, until such time 

 as they have germinated. 



Walnuts when sown are placed lengthwise, 34 lying upon 

 the sides where the shells are joined; and pine nuts are 

 mostly put, in sevens, into perforated pots, or else sown in the 

 same way as the berries are in the laurels which are re-produced 

 by seed. The citron 35 is propagated from pips as well as layers, 

 and the sorb from seed, by sucker, or by slip : the citron, how- 

 ever, requires a warm site, the sorb a cold and moist one. 



CHAP. 12. PROPAGATION BY SUCKERS. 



Mature, too, 36 has taught us the art of forming nurseries ; 

 when from the roots of many of the trees we see shooting up a 

 dense forest of suckers, an offspring that is destined to be 

 killed by the mother that has borne them. For by the shade 

 of the tree these suckers are indiscriminately stifled, as we 

 often see the case in the laurel, the pomegranate, the plane, 

 the cherry, and the plum. There are some few trees, the elm 

 and the palm for instance, in which the branches spare the 

 suckers ; however, they never make their appearance in any 

 of the trees except those in which the roots, from their fond- 

 ness for the sun and rain, keep close, as they range, to the 

 surface of the ground. It is usual not to place all these suc- 

 kers at once in the ground upon the spot which they are finally 

 to occupy, but first to entrust them to the nursery, and to 

 allow them to grow in seed-plots, after which they are finally 

 transplanted. This transplanting softens down, in a most re- 

 markable manner, those trees even which grow wild ; whether 

 it is that trees, like men, are naturally fond of novelty and 



33 These precautions are no longer observed at the present day. 



34 This precaution, too, is no longer observed. 



35 The citron is produced,- at the present day, from either the pips, plants, 

 or cuttings. 



36 This passage is borrowed almost verbatim from Virgil, Georgics ii. 

 50, et seq. 



