25-1 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1728. 



The year following Mr. M. had another parcel of cocoa-nuts given him, 

 which, considering his former ill success, he planted in a different manner, as 

 follows. Having a hot-bed, which had been lately made with tanners-bark, 

 and which was filled with pots of exotic plants, he removed two of the largest 

 pots, which were placed in the middle of the bed, and opening the tanners- 

 bark under the place where the two pots stood, he placed the two cocoa-nuts in 

 it, laying them side-wise, to prevent the moisture, which might descend from 

 the pots, from entering the hole at the base of the fruit, and so rot the seminal 

 plant on its first germinating. He then covered the nuts over with the bark 2 

 or 3 inches thick, and placed the two pots over them in their former station. 

 In this place he let the nuts remain for 6 weeks ; when removing the two pots, 

 and uncovering the nuts, he found them both shot from the hole in the base of 

 the fruit, an inch in length ; and from the other end of the fruit were several 

 fibres emitted 2 or 3 inches in length. On finding them in such a forwardness, 

 he took them out of the bark, and planted them in large pots, filled with good 

 fresh earth, plunging the pots down to their rims in the tanners-bark, and 

 covering the surface of the earth in the pots half an inch thick with the same : 

 soon after which, the young shoots were above 2 inches long, and continued to 

 thrive very well. Mr. M. communicated this method to some of my acquaint- 

 ances, who have tried it with the same success ; and if the nuts are fresh, 

 scarcely any of them miscarry. This led him to try if the same method would 

 succeed as well, with other hard-shelled, exotic seeds, which he could not, by 

 any method he had before tried, get to grow ; as, the bonduc, or nickar-tree ; 

 the abrus, or wild liquorice ; the phaseolus brasilianus frutescens lobis villosis 

 pungentibus maximus Hermanni, or horse-eye bean ; with several others ; and 

 he has found it both a sure and expeditious way to raise any sort of hard-shelled 

 fruits, or seeds. For the heat and moisture, which are absolutely necessary to 

 promote vegetation, they here enjoy in an equal and regular manner; the 

 tanners-bark, if rightly managed, keeping to near an equality of heat for 6 

 months, and the water which descends from the pots, when they are watered, 

 is by the bark detained from being too soon dissipated : which cannot be ob- 

 tained in a common hot-bed, the earth in such being worked away by the 

 water, and thereby leaving the seeds often destitute of moisture. Some of these 

 seeds Mr. M. has had shoot in a fortnight's time ; which would not have so 

 done in a month in their native soil and climate. He has also found this to be 

 an excellent method to restore orange, or any other exotic trees, which have 

 suffered by a tedious passage, in being too long out of the ground : so that he 

 recovered two orange-trees, which had been 10 months without either earth or 

 water. 



