Indiana State Sentinel

MISCELLANEOUS.

POTTING PLANTS—INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.

Messrs.—At a late meeting of the Natural History Society of Brooklyn, Mr. Brigham stated the successful result of an experiment he had been making for the purpose of potting plants which had been reared in the ground, in order to obviate the injurious consequences of the soil when transplanted in the usual way.

The Advertiser says:

This experiment was upon the chrysanthemum or artemisia, around which he made a small incision directly under the branches, and then enclosed the trunk in a mass of compost contained in a flower-pot, which he severed for the purpose, and bound firmly together. The stalk of the plant was then cut off below the vessel, and in three weeks an innumerable quantity of rootlets shot out from the above incision, and took vigorous hold in the soil, while the plant was preserved in its pristine freshness and unfading bloom. Mr. B. stated that he had no doubt most plants might be treated successfully in the same way; at all events, this was a subject on which the amateur might experiment with pleasure and profit.

It was mentioned that the Chinese dwarfed their fruit and other trees in a similar manner, whereby they have full crops of fruit upon trees three or four feet high. Mr. Brigham admitted that he had derived the idea of his experiment from the lectures of Fletcher Webster last season, before the institute, on the subject of China.