The Ash. 



It should be turned and remixed now and then. Lying in 

 this state, produces a softenuig, absolutely necessary to the 

 vegetation of the seed. Mere age will not do ; for I re- 

 member keeping some Ash seeds in dry sand, which came 

 up, indeed, after they were sown, but which lay in the 

 ground another year before they came up. If kept dry, I 

 think it likely that seed w^ould remain good for, perhaps, 

 fifty years; but it will needs have one clear year to soften 

 in, before it come up. 



108. But you must take care not to be too late in sowing 

 the seeds, in the second year of their age; for, if you have 

 kept them moist, they will begin to start by the month of 

 March, or before : so that the safe way is to sow them in 

 the month of November, just about one year after you have 

 taken them from the tree. The manner of sow^ing is this : 

 the ground should be as good as any that you have got; 

 it should be dug deeply; it should be manured a little, if 

 you have any manure to spare; and when the whole of 

 your piece of ground is dug, you ought to proceed in the 

 sowing in the manner which I shall here very fully de- 

 scribe, because it is precisely in the same manner that the 

 seeds of many, and indeed of most, other forest trees, ought 

 to be sown. This one set of instructions will serve for tlie 

 sowing of so many sorts of trees, that I must request the 

 reader's particular attention to it. 



109. The piece of ground having been duly prepared, 

 you make a straight line on one end, or one side of it, and 

 begin to lay it out into beds of three feet wide, with alleys 

 of fifteen inches wide ; that is to say, such an alley between 

 every two beds. In order to do this with regularity and 

 facility, you provide two straight sticks, each of them four 

 feet three inches long, and you cut a notch round each of 



