2378 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



are better suited for larch than the shallow inferior soils incumbent on the 

 old grey and red sandstone. 



" 4-. Ground having a Subsoil of dry rotten Rock, and which sounds holloiv to 

 the Foot in Time of Drought. 



" 5. Rich Earth, or Vegetable Mould. Independently of receiving ultimate 

 contamination from the putrid juices or exhalations of this soil, the larch 

 does not seem, even while remaining sound, to make so much comparative 

 progress of growth in it as some of the hard-wooded trees, as elm, ash, and 

 sycamore. 



" 6. Black or grey moorish Soils, with Admixture of Peat Moss. Although 

 the soils specified in this class will not afford fine large larch for naval use, 

 yet they may be very profitably employed in growing larch for farming pur- 

 poses, or for coal-mines, where a slight taint of rot is of minor importance. 

 The lightness of larch, especially when newly cut (about one third less 

 weight than the evergreen Coniferae), gives a facility to the loading and 

 carriage, which enhances its value, independently of its greater strength and 

 durability. Those larches in which rot has commenced are fully as suitable 

 for paling as the sound : they have fewer circles of sap wood, and more of 

 red or matured wood. When the rot has commenced, the maturing or red- 

 dening of the circles does not proceed regularly, reaching nearest the bark on 

 the side where the rot has advanced farthest." (Ibid., p. 88.) 



Gathering the Cones and extracting the Seeds. The cones may be gathered 

 any time during the winter season, and kept in a dry place till a week or two 

 before the time of sowing, which generally takes place in April. Boutcher 

 found that, though the cones of the larch are at their full size in autumn, yet 

 the greatest part of the seeds they contain are not then arrived near their 

 maturity, and that they ripen hanging on the trees, during even the coldest 

 winter months. He therefore defers gathering the cones till the month of 

 March or April, when they easily part from the tree, and many of them drop 

 from it. The seeds, when kept in the cones, will retain their vitality for four 

 or five years ; but, when taken out of them, they lose it in a few months. De 

 Candolle attaches no great importance to the choice of seeds ; though it 

 cannot be denied, he says, that trees growing from seeds taken from diseased 

 trees must be more liable to those same diseases. He cautions such as 

 procure seeds from the Tyrol against a practice which he has heard prevails 

 there, of placing the cones near a large fire to make them open ; by which 

 the seeds must be greatly injured, if not totally deprived of their vitality. 

 The cones gathered in the Vallais, he says, are generally opened by the heat 

 of the sun, or over a slow fire; and the seeds from that quarter are preferred 

 by the cultivators of France and Germany. Cones ripened in Britain may 

 either be dried on the kiln, without previous preparation, in the manner 

 already directed for the ^4bietinae in general (see p. 2131.); or each cone 

 may be split before putting it into the kiln, which is a safer method, and less 

 likely to injure the seeds. The operation of splitting, Mr. Sang informs us, 

 " is performed by a small, flat, triangular spatula, sharpened at the point and 

 cutting-angles, and helved like a shoemaker's awl. The cone is held by the 

 fore-finger and thumb of the one hand, upon aflat piece of wood; while with 

 the other, by the splitter, it is split up from the thick end; and afterwards 

 each half is split up the middle, which parts the cone into four divisions. 

 This affords occupation, in wet or stormy weather in the winter season, for 

 the workmen of a place, or for boys or girls, or old people; and is by far the 

 best and least destructive to the seeds of any methods we know; because the 

 cones so split, when exposed to the heat, are suddenly opened, and readily 

 discharge the seeds ; which, consequently, are less injured by the fire heat than 

 they would be if the cones were longer exposed to it ; which, if not split, 

 they would require to be, to cause them to open." Besides the above method 

 of splitting, there are others. " Some people," Sang continues, " use a cone 

 mill, which has large sharp teeth in a concave cylinder, and others fixed in a 

 corresponding roller. The mill is worked by turning the roller with a handle 



