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SECT. XXXII. 
HOW TO GENERATE THE BEST KIND OF SEEDS. 
Ye trees, that fill the rural scene; 
Ye flowers, that o’er th’ enamell’d green 
In native beauty reign; 
O praise the Ruler of the skies, 
Whose hand the genial sap supplies, 
And clothes the smiling plain. 
Merrick. 
The most healthy plants must be chosen,* and those which are most 
early in respect to the season; these should be so insulated, as to have no 
weak plants of the same species, or even genus, in their vicinity, lest the 
fecundating dust of weaker plants should be blown by the winds upon the 
stigmata of the stronger, and thus produce a less vigorous progeny. 
Where new varieties are required, the male dust of one good variety, as 
of the nonpareil apple , should be shed upon the stigmas of another good 
variety, as of the golden-pippin ; and it is probable some new excellent variety 
might be thus generated.^ 
Mr. Knight has given a curious experiment of his impregnating the 
stigmas of the pea-blossoms of one variety with the farina of another. He 
says, Treatise of Apple and Pear, p. 42, “ Blossoms of a small white garden- 
pea, in which the males had previously been destroyed, were impregnated 
with the farina of a large clay-coloured kind with purple blossoms. The 
produce of the seeds thus obtained were of a dark grey colour , but these 
having no fixed habits, were soon exchanged by cultivation into a numerous 
variety of very large and extremely luxuriant white ones\ which were not 
only much larger and more productive than the original while ones , but the 
^ When farmers reverse this rule, and choose the leanest seed, it is for poor land, for large good 
seeds send forth more tillows (shoots) than the ground, by reason of its poverty, could maintain, and 
all would perish, and soon be exhausted. 
f Botany is so much a circle, that it is hardly possible to begin any where without being 
sometimes obliged to anticipate, speaking now of the sexes in plants, which the reader will have the 
goodness to excuse. 
4 G 
