36 THOREA U. 



is then committed to the wind, expressly that it may 

 transport the seed and extend the range of the spe 

 cies ; and this it does as effectually as when seeds 

 are sent by mail in a different kind of sack from the 

 patent-office. There is a patent-office at the seat of 

 government of the universe, whose managers are as 

 much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody 

 at Washington can be, and their operations are infi 

 nitely more extensive and regular. 



There is then no necessity for supposing that the 

 pines have sprung up from nothing, and I am aware 

 that I am not at all peculiar in asserting that they 

 come from seeds, though the mode of their propaga 

 tion by nature has been but little attended to. They 

 are very extensively raised from the seed in Europe, 

 and are beginning to be here. 



When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will 

 not at once spring up there unless there are, or have 

 been, quite recently, seed-bearing pines near enough 

 for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent 

 to a forest of pines, if you prevent other crops from 

 growing there, you will surely have an extension of 

 your pine forest, provided the soil is suitable. 



As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not fur- r 

 nished with wings, the notion is still a very common 

 one that, when the trees which bear these spring up 

 where none of their kind were noticed before, they 

 have come from seeds or other principles sponta 

 neously generated there in an unusual manner, or 

 which have lain dormant in the soil for centuries, 

 or perhaps been called into activity by the heat of a 

 burning. I do not believe these assertions, and I will 

 state some of the ways in which, according to my 

 observation, such forests are planted and raised. 



