The Plane, 



467. Having now given a description of the Plane, I 

 next proceed to give instructions as to the manner of rais- 

 ing it. It is curious that Miller, while he says that 

 he has raised Planes from the seed, seems to place no 

 reliance upon that method, but resorts to the Cuttings and 

 the Layers and thus it is, that they are raised, by all our 

 gardeners and nurserymen; and thus it is, that we have no 

 Plaiie trees in England, but many branches of trees. We 

 scarcely ever see them going up with a clear straight trunk, 

 to any considerable distance. The trunk is in fact a great 

 limb of a tree, and it throws out branches after the manner 

 of a limb; and never goes on rising straight upwards until 

 it gets to a great height, and then begins to ramify. I have 

 seen Planes in America a great deal more than a hun- 

 dred feet high, straight as gun-sticks, and with heads be- 

 ginning to spread sixty or seventy feet from the ground. 

 The reason is, that these trees come from the seed ; but 

 I am sure that the gardeners and nurserymen in England, 

 who might raise them so much cheaper from seed than in 

 any other way, do not know how to do it, or they never 

 would resort to the tardy and expensive mode of raising 

 them by cuttings or layers. 



468. I imported enough of the seed of the Occidental 

 Plane to furnish all England with trees; I sowed some 

 every year, from 1822 to 1826 inclusive ; and when I ought 

 to have had hundreds of thousands every year, I got only a 

 very few hundreds of plants. Last spring, the spring of 

 1827, I was resolved to take particular pains about the 

 matter. I sold some of the seeds in my boxes of seeds ; 

 and, in a catalogue which accompanied the boxes, I directed 

 the seeds to be sown upon sifted mould, and then to be 

 covered with sifted mould only about an inch deep. This 

 I did myself, sowing many beds in this way ; and, to my 



s 



