20 



stenfjeldske Nordlands spruce (Picea excelsa borealis), many 

 experiments were made with it on the heaths of Jutland, which 

 were however quickly abandoned because the plants grew far 

 too slowly. If new, the seed was good and kept extremely well, 

 but in the North of Norway cone years are very rare. In my 

 report of 1888 89 I mention as an example of its keeping quali- 

 ties, a sample of seed of Picea borealis, which was received from 

 Forstmester Gloersen and was 5 years old, but nevertheless ger- 

 minated 48 % in 23 days. In 189697 I had a small lot of new seed 

 which was excellent, as it germinated 95/ in 10 days and 96/ 

 in 15 days. 



THE WEIGHT OF SPRUCE SEED. While the germination of 

 spruce seed has produced no difficulties and brought about no 

 great changes or advances all these years, the weight of the seed 

 on the other hand, has presented a good deal that is new and 

 interesting. Even in the first autumn it could not but be noticed 

 that there was an important variation in seed weight, and in my 

 report on the research results for 1887 88 it was pointed out that 

 the first four spruce seed tests carried out for me by the Dansk 

 Fr6kontrol showed this clearly, as follows: 



Purity Seed weight Germinating power 



German seed 99 9.01 73 % 



Swedish seed 98 5.48 80 



East Norwegian seed 90 5.57 84 



Norwegian Northland seed 98 4.01 44 



This caused me in the following season (1888 89) to undertake 

 a number of investigations into the weight of the seeds both of 

 spruce and Scots pine from many different European districts, 

 and these abundantly confirmed the results of the first year. 



Seven spruce seed samples from seed merchants in Hesse, Ba- 

 varia, Thuringia and Austria gave as the highest seed weight, 9.24 

 for the sample from Hesse, and as the lowest, 8.01 for one of the 

 three Austrian samples, mean weight 8.75 grams. It cannot be 

 assumed with certainty that the samples from these different parts 

 of the country came from cones gathered in these neighbourhoods; 

 they were only samples of trade seed, and the cones might quite 

 well have been sent to the kilns from other districts. 



