Meanwhile the Dutch, who favored the one principal isle, Amboina, selecting that part of it called Leytimeer and the adjoining Uliasser Islands, divided Amboina into 4,000 allotments. Each of these divisions was expected to afford sufficient space for the growth of 125 trees, and it was ordered that this number should be cultivated. In 1720, a law was passed rendering it compulsory on the natives to make up the full complement, and accordingly 500,000 clove trees flourished within the limit of the small island, their annual aggregate product amounting to more than 1,000,000 pounds of cloves. One can scarcely imagine the beauty of these immense groves with their pinkish-white, snowdrop blossoms, the sweet perfumes of which are carried by the gentle breezes far out to sea. The clove tree, owing to its noble height, fine form, and luxuriant foliage, is attractive in appearance. Its bark is thin and smooth and its wood exceedingly hard, but it has a grayish color, which unfits it for cabinet work. It is an evergreen and in its natural state grows to a height of from thirty to forty feet, with a straight trunk, making it the most beautiful of all known trees. When four feet high, the tree spreads into several branches with fork stems, on which leaves grow directly opposite each other. The leaves are long, ovate and smooth, narrow and indented on the edge, pointed and of a thick consistency. The color of the upper surface inclines to red, as also does the stalk, while the under surface is green. The entire tree is strongly aromatic and the petioles of the leaves have nearly the same pungency as the calyces of the flowers. In cultivating cloves, the mother cloves are best selected fresh, as they soon lose their vitality. The fruit seed (called by the natives paleny), which have become fertilized by remaining and ripening on the trees, are first soaked in water three days, or until they begin to germinate, and are next planted in a nursery of rich mold with bud end above ground in shaded beds, six inches apart if many plants are needed, twelve inches apart for few. Two seeds are planted in each hill in the trenches, to provide for the failure of a part of the seed to germinate, and care must be taken not to plant the seed more than two inches below the surface. The nursery beds are made about six feet wide and of any length desired, and are shaded by a flat framework of sticks three to three and one-half feet high, over which is placed grass or cocoanut leaves. The ground is watered every morning and evening by taking water in the hand from the watering pot until the seeds have developed. When the plants appear above ground they are watered every other day, and when about six inches high every ten days.