WESTERN PLANE. 359 



numerous sections, are very distinct and visible. Exposed 

 to the weather or to the alternations of moisture and dry- 

 ness, it quickly decays, and its qualities as a fuel are only 

 of secondary order, as it neither gives much heat nor a 

 bright flame, nor does it yield much charcoal. 



The usual mode of propagation in this country is by 

 layers or by cuttings, which root as freely as those of 

 the willow ; it is also sometimes raised from seed imported 

 from America in the globular catkins, and in this way 

 Cobbett stocked his nursery for some years. In his ac- 

 count of the treatment of the seed, previously to and after 

 being sown, contained in his " Woodlands," we find that, 

 after breaking the balls by hand and separating the down 

 from the seeds, he soaked the latter in lukewarm water 

 for forty-eight hours, they were then mixed with finely- 

 sifted fresh earth, ten gallons of earth to one gallon of 

 seeds : the mixture, being put upon a smooth place on 

 the bare ground was turned and remixed every day for 

 four or five days, keeping it covered with a mat when- 

 ever the turning and mixing was not going on, and as soon 

 as a root began to appear here and there the seeds were 

 sown upon a bed of sifted earth, mixed with the sifted 

 mould, just as they came out of the heap. No further 

 covering of earth was given them, but they were shaded 

 from the sun by mats during the day, watered with a 

 fine-rosed watering-pot in the evening, about which time 

 the mats were taken off for the night. In about a week 

 most of the seeds had germinated, and shortly afterwards 

 the cotyledons appeared. The young plants were then 

 inured by degrees to the sunshine, till they were hardy 

 enough to be exposed during the whole of the day. In 

 October they had ripened their wood, and the next sea- 

 son were fit to run into nursery rows. 



