Chap. 14.] SEED PLOTS. 465 



turned up with the mattock, replete with hospitality to the 

 stranger plants, and as nearly as possible resembling the soil to 

 which it is intended they should be transplanted. .But, a 

 thing that is of primary importance, the stones must be care- 

 fully gathered from off the ground, and it should be walled in, 

 to ensure its protection from the depredations of poultry ; the 

 soil, too, should have as few chinks and crannies as possible, 

 so that the sun may not be enabled to penetrate and burn up 

 the roots. The young trees should be planted at distances 41 of 

 a foot and a-half, for if they happen to touch one another, in 

 addition to other inconveniences, they are apt to breed worms ; 

 for which reason it is that they should be hoed as often as 

 possible, and all weeds pulled up, the young plants themselves 

 being carefully primed, and so accustomed to the knife. 



Cato 42 recommends, too, that hurdles should be set up upon 

 forks, the height of a man, for the purpose of intercepting the 

 rays of the sun, and that they should be covered with straw 

 to keep off the cold. 43 He says that it is in this way that the 

 seeds of the apple and the pear are reared, the pine-nut also, 

 and the cypress, 44 which is propagated from seed as well. In 

 this last, the seed is remarkably 45 small, so much so, in fact, as 

 to be scarcely perceptible. It is a marvellous fact, and one which 

 ought not to be overlooked, that a tree should be produced 

 from sources so minute, while the grains of wheat and of 

 barley are so very much larger, not to mention the bean. 

 What proportion, too, is there between the apple and the 

 pear tree, and the seeds from which they take their rise ? It 

 is from such beginnings, too, as these that springs the timber 

 that is proof against the blows of the hatchet, presses 46 that 

 weights of enormous size even are unable to bend, masts that 

 support the sails of ships, and battering-rams that are able to 



41 The distance, in reality, ought to vary according to the nature and 

 species of the trees, and the height they are to he allowed to attain. 



42 De Re Rust. 48. 



43 These precautions are not looked upon as necessary for the indigenous 

 trees at the present day. For the first year, however, Fee says, the hurdles 

 might be found very useful. 



44 As the young cypress is very delicate, in the northern climates, Fee 

 says, this mode of protecting it in the nursery might prove advantageous. 



43 There is some exaggeration in this account of the extreme smalluess 

 of the seed of the cypress. 

 46 "Wine and oil-presses, for instance. 

 VOL. Ill, H H 



