214 THE LARCH. 
they should be thrashed to pieces with flails. The operation 
is facilitated by the dust and seeds being sifted out from 
among the cones every hour or so as they accumulate. After 
sifting, the cones should be replaced on the floor with an 
additional quantity warm from the kiln, which should under- 
go the same operation, and so on till all the seeds are obtained. 
While in a mill of any ordinary construction the seeds are 
invariably injured, by thrashing they are protected by the 
dust and pieces of cones surrounding them ; even when the 
stroke falls on the spot where the cones and seeds are thin, 
the interstices between the causeway stones preserve the seeds 
from injury. After thrashing, the seeds should be dressed 
with a common barn fanner, which prepares them for being 
sown. The price of seed is commonly from 2s. to 3s. per lb., 
and the expense of manufacturing seldom exceeds 6d. per Ib., 
whilst that of boring and cutting up cones individually with 
a knife exceeds the value of the seeds. 
In the climate of London, the larch should be sown about 
the middle of April, and in the climate of Scotland during 
the last week of that month. If the ground requires to be 
enriched at the time of sowing, it should be with well-rotted 
manure, decayed leaves, or vegetable mould; but the best 
method is to make the larch crop follow after a crop which 
has been well manured a year previously. The ground should 
be light, well pulverized, and smoothly raked. The seeds 
should be moistened for a few days, and then sown in beds 
four feet wide. One pound-weight of seed should occupy 
about four lineal yards of a bed, and the covering should be 
one-fourth of an inch deep. The plants generally appear 
above ground in a fortnight or three weeks, according to the 
state of the weather. The crop is subject to many casualties. 
It must be protected from the attacks of birds until the 
plants have all been a week or two above the ground, and 
situations should be avoided which are subject to the ravages 
of the grub-worm.? 
1 It is now more than twenty years, and shortly after the introduction of 
the Italian rye-grass, that I occasionally grew in the nursery a plot of this 
