NOTIONS ON AETIFICIAL EESTOCKING. 199 



ences of climate, care must be taken that each tree 

 is placed in its proper station. It is not enough 

 that it grows in France ; it should also be sponta- 

 neous in the district. For a long time people have 

 been vainly trying to acclimatise* plants, i.e. to 

 modify during successive generations the conditions 

 under which they thrive. This is nothing less than 

 a chimera ; and whatever may be the duration of the 

 experiment, whatever the appearances of success, 

 the cork oak will no more be acclimatised in the 

 Ardennes than the peduncled oak in Africa. 



All that we can expect, is to naturalise* certain 

 plants which would find in France the same 

 conditions as where they are spontaneous. Still 

 naturalisation is seldom complete. Thus wheat, if 

 left to itself, would soon disappear in the midst of 

 indigenous grasses. The same is true of those trees, 

 of which the naturalisation would appear to be the 

 most nearly effected. The Eobinia (E. pseudo- 

 acacia), though it ripens its fruit, does not grow 

 from seed without cultivation, and can maintain 

 itself naturally only by means of shoots and suckers. 

 In the same way the plane tree, the Weymouth 

 pine, &c., would also disappear without the constant 

 intervention of man. In short, and we cannot 

 repeat it too often, why seek in foreign countries 



* To acclimatise, means, as the author explains, to modify the 

 requirements of a plant, to create a variety capable of living under 

 any given conditions of soil and climate, which are hostile to the 

 original species ; to naturalise, signifies simply to adapt a species to 

 live away from its own habitat, in a locality, however, where it 

 finds the same conditions of vegetation. In both cases natural 

 reproduction by seed is an implied idea. 



