appendix.] WEST INDIES. 153 
filled up these two holes with some good mould, and in 
each of them I planted a clove tree; they grew fast and 
with luxuriance; which induced me to transplant the first 
clove tree I had received into the same garden, observing 
the same treatment; but whilst that tree was growing to 
my satisfaction, an insect destroyed the top of it, and oc¬ 
casioned its death. 
In the month of November 1791, being at Martinico, I 
visited the different gardens in and about the town of Saint 
Pierre : as I was walking in the garden belonging to the 
Dominican friars, I remarked several young clove trees, 
each in a separate basket; they were the property of a 
gardener from Cayenne, and were to be disposed of, I 
purchased the whole of them, consisting of fourteen trees : 
after collecting, from the generosity of my friends, diffe¬ 
rent other plants, I returned to Dominica, rich with my 
new acquisition of clove trees, and determined to try dif¬ 
ferent soils. Holes were dug in several parts of my garden, 
from twelve to fourteen feet distance, and of about the same 
dimensions as those mentioned before: on examining the 
soil I found some of a stiff gravelly nature ; in other parts, 
the substratum was of a yellow sandy kind ; in some holes, 
after taking out about six inches of the surface I found a 
stiff red-clay. Mixing some black mould with the different 
earths taken out of these holes, I filled them up, and plant¬ 
ed in them ten out of the fourteen trees, reserving four 
trees for that part of the garden nearer the foot of the hill, 
where ten or eleven feet had been cut from the surface; 
there 1 dug no more than was necessary to plant my trees : 
the ground was a close, compact, stiff, red clay. In order 
to make an experiment, I mixed no mould, dung, sand, or 
other soil, with design to open the pores of the clay, but 
planted these last four trees in that clay, without the assist¬ 
ance of any thing whatever; abandoning their fate to ng.- 
Vol. III. 
v 
