APPENDIX. 179 



orangery. (The orange tree at Versailles, known 

 as Francis Premier, is the most beautiful tree that I 

 have seen in a box. It is twenty feet high, and 

 extends its branches to a circumference of forty feet. 

 Spite of that, I scarcely believe that this fine stalk 

 dates from the fourteenth century. It is too vigorous, 

 and the skin is too smooth, to be able to count so 

 many years. It is probable that in so long a course 

 of time it has been cut, and that the present tree is 

 a sprout from the old root. This might have oc- 

 curred after the frost of 1 709, which penetrated even 

 into sheltered places. One circumstance gives 

 foundation to this conjecture. This tree is com- 

 posed of two stalks, which both come out of the 

 earth, and have a common stock. This is never the 

 way the tree grows by nature, still less in a state of 

 culture, and from roots held in vases. I have 

 mostly remarked it in the greater number of trees 

 growing upon a stump which had been razeed at 

 the level of the ground. In such case one is forced 

 to leave two suckers t because the sap, being very 

 abundant, could not develop itself in one shoot. 

 It would experience a sort of reaction, which would 

 suffocate the stump and make it parish. This is a 

 well-known fact in the South, where we cultivate 

 largely the orange, and where the trees of double 

 stems are generally recognized as rejetons, or suck- 

 ers from old roots. ) 



After all these data we are authorized to think 

 that in the fourteenth century they had begun already 



