770 
ON PRESERVING FRUITS AND SEEDS. 
In the autumn I again place them in a cool house and treat them 
as before. These old plants are not potted in the spring, hut about 
the end of May I begin to expose them by degrees to the weather, 
and by the middle of June I plant them in a warm border without 
disturbing their roots, they then fruit well all the succeeding summer. 
The composition in which I grow them is a light rich loamy soil, 
with nearly one-third of decomposed leaves well ameliorated by the 
frost. 
John Woolley. 
Sept. 21th, 1832. 
ARTICLE II. 
ON PRESERVING FRUITS AND SEEDS. 
BY A PRACTICAL GARDENER. 
Your correspondent “ J. T.” (p. 688) notices an instance of an im¬ 
portation from the East Indies of seeds, which, being mixed with 
charcoal dust and infolded in paper, proved to have retained their 
germinating powers unimpaired by the voyage. The writer adds, 
that he is not aware whether that method is much practiced. Upon 
this point I am also in ignorance, but the following extract, verbatim 
et literatim , from a somewhat rare work,—Bradley’s Survey of the 
Ancient Husbandry and Gardening, collected from the Greeks and 
Romans*—will probably amuse some of your readers, and show that 
nearly a smilar mode for the preservation of fruits and seeds, was re¬ 
commended upwards of one hundred years ago. “ Wood ashes” says 
the author “ I have experienced to be an excellent preserver of fruits, 
and much the best thing we know to pack tender fruits in for trans¬ 
portation ; it will not only keep such soft fruits as peaches, necta¬ 
rines, apricots, &c. from bruising in the carriage, but keep their 
fleshy parts from putrefaction. The late Lord Capel, who was so fa¬ 
mous for his fine gardens at Kew Green, by this means had fruit 
sent him from this place to Ireland in very good perfection. The 
method of doing which was to gather the fruit when it was quite dry, 
and after laying it in flannels for some hours, a box was prepared for 
it with a bed of fine sifted wood ashes at the bottom, about four in¬ 
ches thick, upon which the fruit was laid so as not to touch one an¬ 
other by about an inch, and then wood ashes sifted over them till all 
the spaces between them were filled, and the fruit was covered about 
two inches; then more fruit was laid in as before, and then more 
ashes, and so on, stratum super stratum, till the fruit reached within 
* Lond. 1725. 
