APPENDIX TO PART I. 



GROWTH OF PLANTS WITHOUT MOULD. ' 



(See Page 61.) 



" SOME account of a suspended plant of Ficus Australis, 

 which was grown for eight months without earth in the stove 

 of the Botanic Garden at Edinburgh. By Mr. William 

 Macnab, superintendant of the Garden." (From the 3rd vol. 

 of the ' Edinburgh Philosophical Journal,' p. 77. Slightly 

 abridged.) 



44 Ficus Australis is a native of New South Wales, and 

 was introduced into the British gardens in 1789, by the 

 Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks. The plant is not 

 uncommon now in collections in this country, where it has 

 been usually treated as a greenhouse plant ; and in a good 

 greenhouse it thrives tolerably well, although it seems 

 rather more impatient of cold than many of the plants from 

 the same country. 



*' When I came to superintend this garden in 1810, I 

 found a specimen of it among the greenhouse plants, where 

 it remained for some time afterwards ; but owing to the bad 

 construction of the greenhouse here, and the very hardy 

 way in which J was obliged to treat the plants in that depart- 

 ment, I did not find the Ficus thrive so well as I had been 

 accustomed to see it do. I concluded that it required more 

 heat, and in the spring of 1811 I placed it in the stove, 

 when it soon began to grow as vigorously as I had ever seen 

 it do. 



