2 PLANT PROPAGATION 
To make a fair start in raising cultivated plants from 
seed, the crop should be well ripened, carefully harvested, 
and properly cleaned. If not intended to be sown at 
once, they should be preserved under such conditions as 
will ensure the germs remaining in a vegetative condition. 
To attain this end different means are adopted, accord- 
ing to the nature of the seeds. Some will retain their 
germinative powers for a very considerable time, while 
others quickly lose life if not sown almost immediately 
after they become mature. 
A large number of our garden seeds have to be stored 
in paper bags or packets until the following spring, to 
await favourable conditions of temperature and light 
for their sprouting and developing. In such cases the 
majority keep in good order if placed in a seed-room 
or other place with an equable temperature of about 
45 degrees, and with a sufficiently dry atmosphere that 
they do not become mouldy and attacked by fungus. 
Many kinds of tree seeds have to be treated in a 
different manner, such as mixing them with slightly 
moist sand or soil, so that the outer covering does not 
become hard, contracted, and shrunken, and the germ 
dried up. In nature the Horse Chestnut and Oak afford 
very good examples of this. The Chestnuts and Acorns 
ripen and fall to the ground, and a little later on the 
leaves drop to cover and protect them in a measure from 
‘extreme changes of temperature and moisture. In send- 
ing such seeds abroad or in importing such from foreign 
countries, if is customary to pack them in a medium 
such as soil, charcoal, or coconut fibre, to assist them to 
retain their vitality during transit. With the seeds of 
some aquatic plants, such as the Victoria regia, it is 
necessary to keep them in water or they soon lose the 
