Chap. 14.] 
SEED PLOTS. 
465 
turned up with the mattock, replete with hospitality to the 
stranger plants, and as nearly as possible resembling the soil to 
which it is intended they should be transplanted. .But, a 
thing that is of primary importance, the stones must be care- 
fully gathered from off the ground, and it should be walled in, 
to ensure its protection from the depredations of poultry ; the 
soil, too, should have as few chinks and crannies as possible, 
so tbat the sun may not be enabled to penetrate and burn up 
the roots. The young trees should be planted at distances*^ of 
a foot and a-half, for if they happen to touch one another, in 
addition to other inconveniences, they are apt to breed worms ; 
for which reason it is that they should be hoed as often as 
possible, and all weeds pulled up, the young plants themselves 
being carefully pruned, and so accustomed to the knife. 
Cato^^ recommends, too, that hurdles should be set up upon 
forks, the height of a man, for the purpose of intercepting the 
rays of the sun, and that they should be covered with straw 
to keep off the cold.*^ He says that it is in this way that the 
seeds of the apple and the pear are reared, the pine-nut also, 
and the cypress,^* which is propagated from seed as well. In 
this last, the seed is remarkably^^ small, so much so, in fact, as 
to be scarcely perceptible. It is a marvellous fact, and one which 
ought not to be overlooked, that a tree should be produced 
from sources so minute, while the grains of wheat and of 
barley are so very much larger, not to mention the bean. 
What proportion, too, is there between the apple and the 
pear tree, and the seeds from which they take their rise ? It 
is from such beginnings, too, as these that springs the timber 
that is proof against the blows of the hatchet, presses^^ that 
weights of enormous size even are unable to bend, masts that 
support the sails of ships, and battering-rams that are able to 
^1 The distance, in reality, ought to vary according to the nature and 
species of the trees, and the height they are to be allowed to attain. 
*2 De Re Eust. 48. 
43 These precautions are not looked upon as necessary for the indigenous 
trees at the present day. For the first year, however, Fee says, the hurdles 
might be found very useful. 
As the young cypress is very delicate, in the northern climates, Fee 
says, this mode of protecting it in the nursery might prove advantageous. 
There is some exaggeration in this account of the extreme smalhiess 
of the seed of the cypress. 
*6 Wine and oil-presses, for instance. ~ 
VOIi. III. H H 
