THE LOCUST TREE. 397 
duces white and yellowish racemes of great beauty and fra- 
grance. As an ornament, however, it is very precarious; it 
is much influenced by the seasons, and seldom blooms abun- 
dantly for a few years in succession. It is generally late in 
coming into leaf, and unless the opening up of the summer 
is mild and genial, it retains a bare and uninteresting appear- 
ance after trees in general are arrayed in their summer dress. 
As it continues to grow to a late period in the year, to ripen 
the more vigorous shoots requires a summer possessed of a 
temperature warm and more protracted than that enjoyed by 
most situations in this country. This is particularly the case 
in soils moist and rich, and where shoots are produced from 
trees after being broken or lopped. 
The tree is sometimes raised from cuttings of the roots, 
but it is more frequently produced from seeds, which gene- 
rally ripen by the end of October. The best seeds are im- 
ported from America. They should be sown early in spring, 
after being soaked in water. The soil should be well drained, 
light, and friable, and where the plants will have full advan- 
tage of sunshine. It is only where the climate is of the best 
description that the soil should be made rich for seedling 
plants. 
The seeds should be sown about two inches apart, and 
covered half an inch. The plants will appear early in 
summer ; and during the first season they commonly grow 
from one and a half to two feet in height, and seldom ripen 
their tops sufficiently when of a much greater size. The 
plants should be transplanted, when one year old, into nur- 
sery lines two feet apart, and the plants ten or twelve inches 
asunder, where they may remain one or two years, when 
they are commonly from five to eight feet high, and suitable 
for being removed to their final destination. One-year seed- 
ling plants are sometimes thinned out, and a proportion of 
them left, six or eight inches apart, in the seed-beds, when 
they become two years old. When treated in this way, they 
are often from five to six feet high, and fit for being perma- 
nently planted out. Thus in early life the locust is apt to 
