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PART III. 



MISCELLANEOUS MATTER CONNECTED 

 WITH NAVAL TIMBER. 



NURSERIES. 



Much of the luxuriance and size of timber de- 

 pending upon the particular variety of the species, 

 upon the treatment of the seed before sowing, and 

 upon the treatment of the young plant, and as this 

 fundamental subject is neither much attended to nor 

 generally understood, we shall take it up ab initio. 



The consequences are now being developed of our 

 deplorable ignorance of, or inattention to, one of the 

 most evident traits of natural history, that vegetables 

 as well as animals are generally liable to an almost 

 unlimited diversification, regulated by climate, soil, 

 nourishment, and new commixture of already formed 

 varieties. In those with which man is most intimate, 

 and where his agency in throwing them from their 

 natural locality and dispositions has brought out this 

 power of diversification in stronger shades, it has 

 been forced upon his notice, as in man himself, in 

 the dog, horse, cow, sheep, poultry^ — in the apple, 



