provide the seed to be transported. In other words, a beautiful thin sack
is woven around the seed, with a handle to it such as the wind can take
hold of, and it is then committed to the wind, expressly that it may
transport the seed and extend the range of the species; and this it does,
as effectually, as when seeds are sent by mail in a different kind of sack
from the patent-office. There is a patent-office at the seat of government
of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion
of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are
infinitely more extensive and regular.

There is then no necessity for supposing that the pines have sprung up
from nothing, and I am aware that I am not at all peculiar in asserting
that they come from seeds, though the mode of their propagation _by
nature_ has been but little attended to. They are very extensively raised
from the seed in Europe, and are beginning to be here.

When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will not _at once_ spring up
there unless there are, or have been, quite recently, seed-bearing pines
near enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent to a forest
of pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there, you will surely
have an extension of your pine forest, provided the soil is suitable.

As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings, the
notion is still a very common one that, when the trees which bear these
spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they have come
from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there in an unusual
manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps
been called into activity by the heat of a burning. I do not believe these
assertions, and I will state some of the ways in which, according to my
observation, such forests are planted and raised.