CHAP. I. SOILS. 13 



As the general result of our experience hitherto, it may, 

 however, be laid down, that the cultivation of plants from 

 South Australia and the Cape of Good Hope is, with few excep- 

 tions, to be regarded as almost hopeless in Lower Bengal. The 

 introduction of the various bulbous plants, with which the Cape 

 so abounds, has uniformly been found unsatisfactory in the 

 extreme. Again, some few of the plants that adorn our gardens 

 come from China and Japan ; but very many beautiful things 

 brought from those countries will not thrive, nor even continue 

 alive here long. The same may be said likewise of plants from 

 Java. 



On the other hand, plants from the region of Sierra Leone, 

 the Brazils, the West Indies, and parts of Mexico, are those 

 which have mainly proved suitable to the climate of Calcutta. 

 But of course the elevation and the insular position of the 

 countries whence plants are obtained are as much to be taken 

 into consideration as the latitude. 



In the Punjab, Dr. G. Henderson tells me, all Australian 

 plants thrive well, after they are a year old, and have attained 

 to above three feet in height ; but that up to that time they are 

 very sensitive to excess of moisture during the rains. 



SOILS. 



The gardener must, for the most part, take the soil such as he 

 finds it, and cannot enter into any of those extensive operations 

 for its improvement which, when judiciously conducted, prove 

 so remunerative to the agriculturist. I need, therefore, no more 

 than remark in general, that the soil met with in this country- 

 is principally either a clayey alluvium of a dense nature, as in 

 a large part of Upper India, or, as in the Madras Presidency, of a 

 red loose kind of loam, apparently the more fertile of the two. 



Where sand is a large ingredient in the soil, as it is in some 

 extensive districts of India, horticulture cannot, without diffi- 

 culty, be pursued with any very favourable results. 



PEAT. Anything of the nature of peat, such as is employed 

 largely in gardens in England, does not. that I am aware of, 

 constitute the soil of any part of the plains of India. A material 

 called peat has for many years been made use of in the Cal- 

 cutta Botanical Gardens, and in the Gardens of the Agri-Horti- 



