202 ON THE CULTURE OF STRAWBERRIES. 



escape, the gardener will avoid supplying it in excess ; but strawberry- 

 plants whilst growing are not easily injured by any degree of moisture in 

 the soil. It is scarcely necessary to mention that it will be advantageous 

 in the first, as well as in the second transplantation, not to detach the 

 roots more than necessary from the soil in which they have grown. 



LX. ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE AMARYLLIS SARNIENSIS, OR 



GUERNSEY LILY. 



{Read before the HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, December 2Qth, 1825.] 



So many splendid species and varieties of Crinum, and other plants of 

 the Liliaceous tribe, have within a few years been introduced into our 

 gardens, that the culture of the Amaryllis Sarniensis, or Guernsey Lily, 

 notwithstanding the unrivalled splendour of its blossoms when closely 

 inspected, has to some extent ceased to interest the modern gardener. I 

 should consequently think the matter of my present communication 

 scarcely worth sending to the Horticultural Society, if I were not per- 

 fectly confident that the same mode of culture is applicable to bulbous 

 roots of every kind which do not flower freely (exclusive of those which 

 grow in water), and with but little variation to plants of every kind. 

 Wishing, however, at the present time, to confine myself to very narrow 

 limits, I shall simply relate the experiments which I have made upon the 

 Guernsey Lily, with the conclusions which I have drawn from the result 

 of those experiments ; and my narrative will, I think, be most plain and 

 intelligible, if I confine it to treatment, through successive seasons, of a 

 single root of that plant. 



The gardener possesses many means of making trees produce blossoms ; 

 by ringing, by ligatures, and by depressing their branches; and the 

 increasing thickness of the bark of these necessarily obstructs the course 

 of the descending fluid, and thus tends to render them productive of 

 blossoms. But none of these mechanical means can be made to operate 

 upon the habits of bulbous-rooted plants ; and I thence inferred, that in 

 the culture of these I should best succeed by adopting such measures as 

 would first occasion the generation of much true sap, and subsequently 

 promote in it such chemical changes as would cause it to generate 

 blossoms ; and under these impressions I made, amongst others, the fol- 

 lowing experiments, the results of which have in every respect answered 

 my expectations and wishes. 



A bulb of the Guernsey Lily, which had flowered in the autumn of 



