AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 265 



where, but with us the admiration is usually diverted from nature 

 to other objects. 



Dwarfing or Nanisation is the name which we give to the 

 various operations for producing dwarfed forms, an art in which the 

 Chinese and Japanese are masters, and which they employ more 

 with ornamental plants than with fruit trees. Chinese girls cripple 

 and deform their feet in tiny shoes, and the art and trade gardeners 

 of Eastern Asia frequently check the growth of plants by forcing 

 them into small jars, by frequent transplanting, and by scanty 

 nourishment and close pruning. Their exertions seem directed 

 either to reduction of size, while retaining the form, or to the pro- 

 duction of monstrosities of different kinds. 



To produce a slow growth they choose particularly small 

 seeds from a poorly developed individual plant. Frequent cutting 

 back has been found even more effective, also planting in pots 

 of insufficient size. Twisting the twigs and stems in a horizontal 

 spiral direction has the same effect, and the refrigeration of the 

 ground and roots by evaporation, using porous pots. Grafting 

 is often also a means to this end, i.e. it serves to check natural 

 development. It is employed especially in the many varieties of 

 Momiji {Acer poly morpJiimi), and is usually effected according to 

 the oldest methods known to gardening — grafting by juxta- 

 position, a sort of " greffe par approche " as it is called by the 

 French. The cutting which is to be engrafted is sharpened on one 

 side and laid in an incision cut diagonally in the wild tree, or 

 attached to the wild stock by a sort of splicing, and then carefully 

 bound. 



Some of the results obtained in Chinese and Japanese gardening 

 in dwarfing species are very surprising. Kaempfer relates that he 

 once saw growing together in a small box, 4 inches long, i\ inches 

 broad, and 6 inches high, a bamboo cane, a pine tree, and a bloom- 

 ming Mume-plum tree. The price of this group of dwarfs was 

 1,200 Dutch gulden, or nearly ;^ioo : an evidence of the difficulty 

 and tediousness of the accomplishment, also a token of the high 

 estimation of such abnormal forms ; for what nurseryman in 

 Europe would think of asking one-tenth of this sum for this sort 

 of production } 



The employment of this peculiar art of Nanisation on some of 

 the coniferae is very popular, especially on the Matsu (Pmics 

 Massoniana and P. densiflora), the Nagi [Podocarpiis Nageid) and 

 Koyamaki {Sciadopitys verticillatd), also on Mume (Prunus Mume), 

 Sakura [P. pseudoceraszis), Kaki {Diospyros kaki), Momo {Ainyg- 

 dalus persicd), Masaki {Etionymtcs japo7iicus), and several other 

 ornamental plants, among them the bamboo cane. Particularly 

 scarce varieties of such dwarf plants are put up in finely decorated 

 blue porcelain pots, and bring high prices. 



Whoever visits a Japanese art and trade-garden in spring will 

 notice in company with these dwarf forms, yet another kind of popu- 



