EXCEPTIONAL CASES. 251 



certainly packed with all those precautions which have heen 

 erroneously supposed to be advantageous ; the hopelessness of 

 raising plants from such seeds at length became so apparent, 

 that persons would not take the trouble to sow them when 

 they arrived. On the other hand seeds sent from India, 

 packed in the manner last described, exposed to all the 

 accidents which those first mentioned can have encountered, 

 germinate so well, that we can scarcely say that the failure 

 has been greater than if they had been collected in the south 

 of Europe. 



It is not to be doubted that the general badness of the seeds 

 from Brazil, from the Indian Archipelago, and from other 

 intertropical countries, is almost always to be ascribed to the 

 seeds having been originally insufficiently dried, and then en- 

 closed in tightly packed boxes, whence the superfluous moisture 

 had no means of escape. 



But although experience shows that as a general rule in 

 SEED-PACKING, the great points to observe are the drying 

 seeds thoroughly before packing, and the preserving them in 

 that state afterwards by means of ventilation, there are a few 

 exceptions to this general and important rule. 



If Acorns or sweet Chestnuts are preserved dry, they soon 

 lose their vitality; the same is apparently true of the Mango, 

 of Magnolias, the Chilian Araucaria, and some other plants. 

 The reason of this has never been satisfactorily explained, and 

 is the less obvious when it is considered that some of these 

 seeds are oily, others resinous, and others astringent. On this 

 account the treatment of them in a long voyage is merely 

 empirical. It is, however, known that the most certain mode 

 of conveying them is to place them in a situation where they 

 are unable either to absorb moisture or to lose it. The best 

 manner of effecting this is to pack them solidly in dry sand or 

 nearly dry loam. 



The manner of using sand or loam as a packing material is this : — 

 Take a box, of wood sufficiently stout to resist pressure from within ; 

 strew three inches of sand or earth on the bottom ; upon this place a 

 thin layer of seed, taking care that the outside seeds are not nearer 

 than three inches to the side of the box ; then cover this layer with an 



