MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 189 



season. I potted off one half of my plants early in May, 1835, and the other early 

 in June. At the end of April 1836, 1 repotted the plants into 24s, keeping the 

 ball entire. I placed the plants at first in a Melon frame, and when six inches 

 high took them into the greenhouse where 1 have kept them till now. 



Near Boston, May 16**, 1836. Sarah. 



On the Culture of Proteas. — The eager avidity with which spirited, libe- 

 ral-minded gentlemen in this country, have, at various periods in the course of the 

 last forty years, sought to possess and maintain in their collections living exam- 

 ples of the many Genera of Proteaceje, 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 Hib- 

 bert, Esq. at Clapham, but the gardens of other gentlemen, and especially the 

 sale-collections of the more eminent nurserymen around London, could boast of 

 many choice specimens of Cape Proteaceous plants, which, in the present dav, are 

 nowhere to be seen ; for having been urged by culture to put forth their showy 

 flowers, they immediately afterwards, in many instances, exhibited, from mistreat- 

 ment, 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. John Smith, to whose 

 horticultural knowledge is superadded a critical botanical discrimination of plants 

 generally, and especially of that numerous and beautiful tribe, the Filices, 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 

 Crvptogamic vegetation, to bear ample testimony. Adverting to the interesting 

 pamphlet of Mr. MACNAB,the excellent Superintendent of the Royal Botanic 

 Garden at Edinburgh, on the propagation and culture of Cape Heaths, which 

 appeared in 1831, Mr. Smith observes, that he had pursued with success for 

 some time antecedent to that date, the same mode of treatment of Proteaceje 

 under his care, that is recommended in that publication, with respect to the cul- 

 ture 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 

 fragments of half-baked pottery, a good drainage below, and especially to avoid 

 deep potting, by placing the plant, with its ball of earth round the roots quite en- 

 tire, 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 becom- 

 ing stagnant round the base of the stem ; by inattention to this latter circumstance, 

 many a Banksia and Dryandra in other collections have been killed ; whilst a 

 steady regard to free drainage, to an abundant circulation of air, and a low tem- 

 perature, he has succeeded in preserving many fine proteaceous plants longer than 

 is generally effected in other gardens 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 bv Mr. 

 MaCNAB with regard to Cape Heaths, &c, had its prejudice on his mind for years, 

 fur DO other reason, as he himself tells us, " than that I fancied the plant looked 

 as if it were ill potted, and, to my view, unsightly." " But we now see, how 

 ranch other and more judicious management, founded on physiological principles, 

 has overcome the prejudices of former days, and the difficulties attendant on the 

 culture of nut simply these, but the plants of other tribes : — witness our orchideons 

 Epiphytes. " The soil," continues this intelligent cultivator, " which I use in the 

 culture of most of the 1'roteace^:, is a good fresh loam, with wliirli, if still', I 

 mix a portion of sand, <>o as not to admit of its being retentive of water. In time, 



