The Chesnut. 



become exposed by tbe washings of heavy rams. They 

 come up in the month of May, and they get, by the month 

 of October, to be about six or seven inches high, with 

 leaves pretty nearly as- large as those of the old tree. 



195. If the seeds be imported^ you run great risks ; for 

 they may have been put into an oven^ in order to prevent 

 their heating on the voyage ; and, nine times out of ten, 

 that will destroy the germ, though the nut may still be very 

 good for eating. If the nuts have been put in heaps, or 

 packages, and have at all fermented, they will not grow. 

 I received several barrels, three years ago, in a very fine 

 state, mixed with sand, perfectly dry. In order to put 

 them in a state of greater security, I deemed it advisable 

 to lay them in a heap in the garden, separated from their 

 sand, and covered over with a foot thick of mould. My 

 ground was not ready, and I feared that they would get too 

 dry before I could conveniently sow them. But, deprived 

 of their sand, and being put together in a heap, the moisture 

 that remained in them caused them to heat and to mould, 

 I examined the germs of them, and found them all rotten. 

 I sowed them, however, but had not one single plant, when 

 I ought to have had twenty, or perhaps fifty, thousand ; 

 and I have invariably found, that if seed, no matter of what 

 sort, once ferment, be it ever so little, it will not grow. 

 This is almost always the case with acorns that have to be 

 conveyed from one place to the other ; and it is for this 

 reason that they ought always to be made very dry ; and, 

 for fear of their becoming withered, and the destruction of 

 the germ produced this way, they ought always to be 

 packed in very dry sand. 



196. As to the TRANSPLANTING from the seed-bed 

 to the nursery, and from the nursery to the plantation, 



