CULTIVATION OF NUTMEGS AND CLOVES IN BENCOOLEN, 
5? 
The nutmeg tree is monoecious as well as dioecious, but no 
means of discovering the sexes before the period of inflorescence 
are yet known. The relative proportion of male and female trees 
to each other is also undefined, and is indeed the result of chance. 
Setting aside, however, all pretension to mathematical precision, 
the number of productive trees may be roundly estimated at two- 
thirds of the whole cultivation. As the monoecious plants are pro- 
ductive, the number of male trees necessary to be retained will de- 
pend entirely on that of the monoecious kind; all above this number, 
being considered superfluous, should be cut down and other trees 
planted in their stead. Were I indeed to originate a nutmeg 
plantation now, I should either attempt to procure grafts on male 
stocks on such trees as produce the largest and best fruit, by the 
process of inarching, notwithstanding the speculative hypothesis 
of the graft partaking of the gradual and progressive decay of the 
parent tree, leaving a branch or two of the stock for the purpose 
of establishing a regular polygamy, by which means the planta- 
tion would consist of monoecious trees only ; or I should place the 
young plants in the nursery at the distance of four feet from each 
other, and force them to an early discovery of their sex, by lifting 
them out of their beds once a year and replacing them in the same 
spot, so as to check the growth of wood and viviparous branches. 
The sex might thus be ascertained on an average within the fourth 
year, and the trees removed to the plantation and systematically 
arranged, whereas in the usual mode of proceeding it is not ascer- 
tainable in general before the seventh year. 
Upon an average, the nutmeg tree fruits at the age of seven 
years, and increases in produce till the fifteenth year, when it is 
at its greatest productiveness. It is said to continue prolific for 
seventy or eighty years in the Moluccas, but our experience car- 
ries us no farther than twenty-two and a half years, all the trees 
of which age that have been properly managed, are still in the 
highest degree of vigor and fecundity ; and for this reason no term 
for planting a succession of trees can as yet be fixed upon. Seven 
months in general elapse between the appearance of the blossom 
and ripening of the fruit, and the produce of one bearing tree with 
another under good cultivation may, in the fifteenth year of the 
plantation, be calculated at five pounds of nutmegs, and a pound 
