The Plane. 



you would grain from chaff ; put the seeds soaking in luke- 

 warm water for eight-and-forty hours ; took the seeds out 

 of the water^ and mixed them with finely-sifted fresh earth, 

 ten gallons of earth to one gallon of seeds ; put the mixture 

 upon a smooth place upon the bare ground ; turned and 

 re-mixed the heap every day, for four or five days, keeping 

 it covered with a mat whenever the turning and mixing 

 was not going on ; and, as soon as I perceived here and 

 there a root beginning to appear, I sowed the seeds upon 

 a bed of sifted earth, mixed with the sifted mould just as 

 they came out of the heap. 



474. There the seeds lay then, pretty nearly as thick as 

 they could well lay, on the top of the ground. In this state 

 1 watered them gently every evening with a fine-rosed 

 watering pot, kept them securely shaded from the sun by 

 mats, by the means of frames or hoops to keep the mats 

 from touching the ground, and took tiie mats off every 

 evening at about an hour after sun-set. In about a week, 

 I saw the roots coming out at the point of the nail, and 

 going down into the ground. Soon afterwards, the nails, ^ 

 as I call them, began to raise their heads. In a few days 

 they were all standing bolt upright, and in a few days more, 

 the rusty looking coat was shuffled off, and out came the 

 seed leaves, resembling, as nearly as possible, the seed leaves 

 of the Red Beet-root, or those of the Mangel Wurzel. 



475. After this, I shaded the plants less and less, till they 

 became hardy enough to be exposed during the whole of 

 the day. Instead of being done in April, this work was not 

 done until the month of July ; and therefore the plants were 

 a mere nothing in point of size in the month of October; 

 and were hardly in a condition to resist the frost without 

 feome degree of covering. 1 am now about to plant them 



