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CHAP. 58.—HOW TREES GROW SPONTANEOUSLY—DIVERSITIES IN THEIR NATURE, THE SAME TREES NOT GROWING EVERYWHERE.

The trees which we owe to Nature are produced in three different ways; spontaneously, by seed sown, or by a slip which throws out a root. Art has multiplied the methods of reproduction, as we shall have occasion to state in its own appropriate Book1 at present our sole subject is the operations of Nature, and the manifold and marvellous methods she adopts. The trees, as we have already stated,2 do not all of them grow in every locality, nor will they live, many of them,3 when transplanted: this happens sometimes through a natural antipathy on the part of the tree, sometimes through an innate stubbornness, but more frequently through the weakness of the variety so transplanted, either the climate being unfavourable, or the soil repulsive to it.

1 See B. xvii. c. 9.

2 In c. 7 of this Book.

3 It is not improbable that he has in view here the passage in Virgil's Georgics, B. ii. 1. 109, et seq.

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