84 
NUTMEG PLANTATIONS. 
As we returned through his orchard of nutmeg-trees, 
the doctor indulged us with a few remarks in regard to 
their culture, &c. ; and, as nine people out of ten use 
nutmeg in some form, I will repeat here what was then 
said about them. 
It took the planter twenty years to get his trees well 
covered with fruit, he said, as he had to raise them from 
the nutmeg itself. The process was this: — 
A man bought a hundred acres of ground, and planted 
nutmegs over it at a distance of from twelve to twenty feet 
apart. At the end of eight yeai's the trees have grown 
and many of them bear fruit, and he can thus tell the 
male tree from the female. All of the former (one to 
every dozen females excepted) are now dug up and cast 
away and another nutmeg planted in their place. Then, 
at the end of eight more years, another culling process 
takes place, and more nutmegs are planted. In this 
way the twenty years are soon consumed. 
The doctor added that if either of us would rig a 
purchase for distinguishing between the male and female 
nutmeg, we might make millions of money by going 
around to the different plantations, picking out the 
latter, and thus enabling men to get a plantation under 
full headway in eight instead of sixteen or twenty-four 
years. 
“These trees,” he continued, “bear all the year through. 
You must have men to go daily from one to the other, 
picking the fruit as it ripens. It is generally the first 
thing done in the morning. In this way each tree will 
give you several nutmegs daily, probably as many as 
twelve hundred duinug the year.” So much for nutmegs. 
