206 ON PROPAGATION BY SEED. 



hold good at all in the case of trees in a high state of culture, such as 

 fruit trees ; or in the case of herbaceous plants in a highly artificial 

 state, such as the culinary vegetables of our gardens, and the principal 

 agricultural plants of our farms. The weeping-ash was an accidental 

 sport ; but notwithstanding this, out of many hundred plants raised 

 from seed collected from a weeping tree by a nurseryman at Berlin, 

 one or two were found to exhibit the weeping characters of the parent ; 

 and when we consider that all the common weeping-ash trees in Europe 

 have been propagated from one tree, that at Gamblingay, in Cam- 

 bridgeshire, and that this tree is a female, so that the blossoms, when 

 fertile seeds have been produced, must have been fecundated by the 

 male blossoms of some adjoining common ash, the small proportion of 

 weeping plants raised is not surprising. The acorns produced by a 

 celebrated weeping-oak at Moccas Court, in Herefordshire, produce 

 plants almost all of which have the branches drooping, though this 

 tree is not farther removed from nature than the weeping-ash, both 

 having been found accidentally in a wild state. The stones of a green- 

 gage plum, and the seeds of a golden-pippin apple, will unquestionably 

 produce plants, many of which will bear varieties of the greengage 

 and golden pippin ; and though these may vary from the fruit of their 

 parents, yet they will not vary more than the produce of a wilding, 

 such as a crab-apple, or a wild plum, will sometimes do from its parent. 

 The seeds of the cultivated varieties of cabbage, peas, wheat, oats, &c., 

 it is well known, produce plants in all respects like their parents, or, 

 in horticultural language, ** come true." The seeds of trees, however, 

 are not so much to be depended on as those of herbaceous plants, and 

 especially of annuals, in a high state of culture ; for a kernel out of 

 the same apple which produced the Ribston pippin produced another 

 tree, the fruit of which proved little better than a crab. From these 

 facts we consider it safe for the gardener to adopt it as a principle, that 

 the seeds of trees, as well as of herbaceous plants, will not only repro- 

 duce the species, but, to a considerable extent, also the variety ; though 

 we cannot depend on this mode for reproducing the variety with the 

 same certainty as we can on propagation by division. 



On Propagation by Seed. 



The seed is of a mucilaginous consistency when young, and it 

 becomes more or less solid when matured. Before germination can 

 take place, the solid part of the seed must be rendered again muci- 

 laginous, and soluble in water ; and this is effected by the moisture and 

 heat of the soil, and the oxygen of the atmosphere. The absence of 

 light, or at least of much light, is also favourable to germination, but 

 not essential to it ; for though when seeds are sown they are generally 

 covered in proportion to their size, in order to maintain an equal degree 

 of moisture and to keep them in darkness, we also sow the smaller 

 seeds, such as those of ferns and heaths, on the surface, and maintain 

 the requisite moisture by means of a close covering of glass, only 

 moderating the light by placing them in the shade. That the want of 



