88 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



which advances with great vigour on the return of 

 spring. 



A knowledge of these circumstances might have led 

 to the opinion that this variety of rice could be natural- 

 ized in England, if the attempt had not already- 

 been fairly made by one well qualified for conducting 

 the experiment. Samples of six different sorts of 

 mountain rice which had been procured by Sir John 

 Murray from the neighbourhood of Serinagur at the 

 foot of Mount Imaus, were, on the occasion alluded 

 to, presented by the Board of Agriculture to Sir 

 Joseph Banks, who planted each kind in a separate 

 bed, in a sheltered spot with a south aspect, in his 

 garden at Spring Grove. The grains, which were 

 sown very thin on the 21st of May, speedily sprang 

 up, and the plants tillered so much that the beds put 

 on the appearance of compact, dense masses o 

 vegetation ; each plant having from ten to twenty 

 off-sets. Although the blades grew vigorously, at- 

 taining in a short time to the length of two feet, there 

 was never any symptom of a rising stem, and if the 

 ground was not watered, either by rain or artificially 

 every three or four days, the plants began to assume 

 a sickly hue. In this manner vegetation proceeded, 

 without the smallest symptom of their perfecting 

 themselves by fructification, when the plants were 

 suddenly destroyed by an early night frost in Sep- 

 tember. Some of the plants, which had been trans- 

 ferred to pots and placed in the hot-house at an early 

 period of their growth, soon died ; while others, 

 which were sown originally in a hot-house, pro- 

 duced ears and flowered, but the blossoms dropped' 

 without perfecting any seed. 



The conclusion to which Sir Joseph Banks arrived 

 from these experiments was unfavourable to the 

 cultivation of rice in this country as a grain-bearing 



