Se oe 
Pa ala “ - 
lated, bursting longitudinally. Style terete, obscurely sulcated, exserted, 
longer than the perianth, very smooth, slightly subulate, thickened 
towards the base. Stigma simple. Hypogynous glands four, oblong, 
bilobed. i, 
The eager avidity with which spirited, liberal-minded gentlemen in this 
country, have, at various periods in the course of the last forty years, sought 
to possess and maintain im their collections living examples of the many 
Genera of PRoTEACEs#, affords an abundant proof of the great interest 
they have excited, and of the high estimation in which plants of a family, 
possessing forms no less extraordinary than numerous, whether indigenous 
to the Cape of Good Hope, or to the arid shores of Australia, have been held. 
At one period, within, doubtless the recollection of some of our readers, 
not only the King’s gardens at Kew, and the rich Conservatories of GEoRGE 
HIBBERT, Esq. at Clapham, but the gardens of other gentlemen, and espe- 
cially the sale-collections of the more eminent nurserymen around London, 
could boast of many choice specimens of Cape Proteaceous plants, which, 
in the present day, are nowhere to be seen ; for having been urged by culture 
to put forth their showy flowers, they immediately afterwards, in many in- 
stances, exhibited, from some mistreatment, debility and sickness, and 
eventually dying, have ever since been lost to Britain. Since an ignorance. 
at the time, of the proper mode of managing the plants of this family, whether 
natives of the Cape or of New Holland, doubtless led to the mortality that 
prevailed at periods not many years subsequent to their having been raised 
from the imported seeds, perhaps it may not be out of place in this work, to 
give our readers the substance of a few practical observations offered us, on 
the successful treatment of certain of the Order, as pursued at Kew by the 
principal very able cultivator in that garden, Mr. Joun Situ, to whose 
horticultural knowledge is superadded a critical botanical discrimination of 
plants generally, and especially of that numerous and beautiful tribe, the 
FILicgs, and to whose talents in these particulars, we are happy, in common 
with other Botanists in Britain and on the continent, especially attached to 
the study of Cryptogamic vegetation, to bear ample testimony. : 
Adverting to the interesting pamphlet of Mr. Macnas, ‘the excellent 
Bitbenistcadait of the Royal Botanic Garden at Edinburgh, on the propaga- 
tion and culture of Cape Heaths, which appeared in 1831, Mr. Smita 
observes, that he had pursued with success for some time antecedent to that 
date, the same mode of treatment of PRoTEACE# under his care, that is re- 
commended in that publication, with respect to the culture of Heaths, viz. 
in regard to shifting the plants into fresh and larger pots; in the process of 
which, it is very important to afford, by means of potsherds, or set of 
half-baked pottery, a good drainage below, and especially to avoid deep pot- 
ting, by placing the plant, with its ball of earth round the roots quite entire, 
So as to be some two or three inches above the surface of the soil at the edge 
of the pot, which will have the effect of carrying off any superabundant 
moisture from the roots to the circumference, and thus prevent the chance of 
water becoming stagnant round the base of the stem; by inattention to this 
latter circumstance, many a BANKsra and Dryanpra in other collections 
have been killed; whilst a steady regard to free drainage, to an abundant 
circulation of air, and a low temperature, he has succeeded in preserving 
many fine proteaceous plants longer than is generally effected in other gar- 
dens in the neighbourhood of London. 
‘« Even in the present day,” he observes, “ there may be some few 
gardeners, who may object to the mode of potting certain plants here insisted 
on, on the ground that, by being thus raised in their pots above the soil at 
the edge, they have not a handsome look ; and this practice, now adopted and 
recommended 
