MYRISTICA MOSCHATA. 
77 
could hold." In 1760, M. Beaumar^ witnessed at Amsterdam, near 
the Admiralty, the destruction by fire of a mass of spice, which was 
valued at one million livres, and an equal quantity was condemned 
to be burnt the day following ; and Mr. Wilcocks, the translator 
of Stavorinus's Travels, relates, that he himself beheld such a con- 
flagration of cloves, nutmegs, and cinnamon, upon the little Island 
of Newland, near Middleburgh, in Zealand, as perfumed the air 
with their aromatic scent for many miles round. 
"M. Poivre had the honour of introducing this valuable plant into 
the Isles of France and Bourbon, in 1772, together with the clove ; 
thence by the liberal policy of the French, it was sent to Guiana, and 
to the West India Islands. 
" In 1796, the British took possession of the Molucca Islands, and 
two years afterwards planted the nutmeg at Bencoolen, in Sumatra, 
where it is grown in the greatest luxuriance ; so that in five years, 
the two had . arrived from ten to fourteen feet in height, and in 
October and November, 1802, two hundred and forty-seven trees, 
out of about six hundred, blossomed : about half of these were 
male, and the rest female. A second importation was made to that 
island, by the assistance of the Bengal government ; and the son of 
Dr. Roxburgh arrived there with twenty-two thousand nutmeg plants 
from Amboyna, which, in a few years, yielded 200,000 pounds 
weight of nutmegs, and 50,000 pounds of mace. 
'* In the Moluccas, the Dutch appear to have been totally ignorant 
of the dioecious nature of the trees, and of the cause of sterility in 
so many of them. Where the trees are very abundant this is a mat- 
ter of comparatively trifling importance, but in colonies where but 
few plants have been introduced, it is not only of essential conse- 
quence that the female flowers should be fertilized by the male, but 
that the male plants should be employed in the most economical manner. 
This has been achieved by M. Joseph Hubert, in the Isle of France, 
in the most successful manner. Ascertaining that one male plant is 
sufficient for a hundred females, he resolved upon grafting the seed- 
ling stock of all his plantations in that proportion, in the second year 
of their growth : by this means there are no superfluous trees, and 
they come into bearing the sooner. According to the old method, 
the trees did not bear flowers till the seventh or eighth year, and it 
was not till that period that the useless trees could be removed. 
" In our West India colonies the nutmeg was introduced about 
thirty years ago ; and first, to the island of St. Vincent from Cay- 
enne, though not without great difficulty, on account of the extreme 
