C. A. BARBER 149 



often very minute, morphological characters which, taken together, give the 

 plant an indefinable but real form of habit. 



One of the chief difficulties met with, in this habit study, has been (as 



already stated) that the method of arranging the seedlings in their early stages 



has been dictated by the need for economy in watering. They are at first 



raised in shallow pans and then pricked out as soon as they show themselves 



likely to be healthy and vigorous. They are transferred to nine-inch pots when 



6" to a foot high, and these are arranged in wide trenches so that they can be 



watered all together by filling the trench (c/. p. 114). They are usually 



kept in the pots until about six months old and then some of them 



are already four or five feet high. The disadvantages attending this 



procedure was very clearly shown in the Saretha seedlings raised during the 



1914-16 period. Owing to the very large number of healthy seedlings 



available, a set of one thousand were planted in rough ground, at one 



foot apart, when three months old. Another large lot were planted in 



pots in the usual manner and irrigated all together. Yet a further lot 



were retained for five months in their pans and then potted. Some 



hundreds were left in their pans and not even pricked out, while, lastly, 



a batch was planted in the ground when quite young, close together, being 



intended for the supply of failures in those raised in the pots. These separate 



lots of seedlings were examined and photographed at six months of age and 



varied, from six feet high, in those planted early in the ground close together, 



to 1 — 2 feet where left in the pans. The habit in all but one lot Avas fairly 



uniform and no classification was well possible according to this. Onlv those 



planted one foot apart in the ground showed habit difterences well, and these 



varied from absolutely prostrate, through strongly oblique, by various stages, 



to nearly erect, besides showing other differences, such as in the shape and 



denseness of the plants. 



