The Sassafras. 



should like to get some of the plants. The tnitli is, that 

 the few that there are in England (except those that I have 

 raised from the seed) have been raised from suckers, 

 coming from plants, originally brought from America. It 

 was difficult to make me believe, that the seed would not 

 grow in England ; and, therefore, as soon as I got some 

 land, I began to import the seed; and, I sowed it, of 

 course, but for years I never got any plants. 



498. This seed is a most curious thing. It has a pulp on 

 the outside, within that pulp a thin shell, within that shell 

 a plump fleshy kernel very large in proportion to the whole 

 bulk of the berry. I, for want of looking into Miller, ex- 

 pected such soft seeds to come up the first summer after 

 they were sown ; and never seeing them come up, I, year 

 after year, dug up the ground and sowed it with something 

 else. Miller would have told me, that the seeds lie two 

 years in the ground, and sometimes three years; in short, 

 he would have told me all that I now know ; for, in the 

 spring of the year 1826 1 sowed several small beds of these 

 seeds. I resolved not to break them up the first year ; and 

 last spring, they came up tolerably well ; and 1 have sold 

 several hundreds of them this winter. Nurserymen have 

 generally a strange aversion to the raising of trees from 

 seeds ; and it appears that this aversion is hereditary, going 

 down from father to son, and from master to apprentice ; 

 for Miller, after teaching the mode of raising the trees 

 from seeds, immediately tells us, that the general practice 

 is to raise them from layers, which is very seldom attended 

 with success ; and that, says he, is the reason, why this tree 

 is so very rare in England. The truth is. Miller's book 

 was too large : there was too much of it for a gentleman 

 to read ; and as to gardeners, they were, in his time, as 

 they are in these times, much too wise, and of a great deal 



