On the Acclimating Principle of Plants. 2 1 



when spring does open in countries far to the north, than in 

 the tropics. In Lapland and on Hudson's Bay, the full leaf 

 is unfolded in one or two weeks, when spring begins, although 

 it requires six or eight weeks in the south. Nature makes up 

 in despatch for the want of length in her seasons, and this 

 enables us to cultivate the annual plants very far to the north, 

 in full perfection. The beans, pumpkins, potatoes, peas, cab- 

 bages, lettuce, celery, beets, turnips, and thousands of others, 

 seem to disregard climate, and grow in any region or latitude 

 where man plants and cherishes them. The fig is becoming 

 common in France; the banana, pine-apple, and many other 

 plants, have crossed the line of the tropics, and thousands of 

 the plants, valuable for food, clothing and medicine, and 

 such as are cultivated for their beauty, fragrance or timber, 

 are extending their climates, and promise much comfort and 

 resource to man. Plants lately introduced, whose cultivation 

 has not run through many ages or years, have acquired but little 

 latitude in their growth, and show but little capacity to bear 

 various climates, because time has not yet habituated them to 

 such changes, and human cares have not imparted to them 

 new habits and new powers. 



Nothing can be effected by suddenness in acclimating 

 plants ; too quick a transition would shock them ; it must be 

 a very gradual process, embracing many years, and many re- 

 movals. The complete success that has attended the plants 

 first named, the earliest companions of man, proves this. In 

 the more recent plants success is exactly in proportion to the 

 length of time that a plant has been in a train of experimental 

 culture. 



The most striking method of testing the effect of climate 

 on plants, is to carry suddenly back to the south, such as have 

 been extended far, and become habituated to a northern cli- 

 mate. Such plants have so much vigor, and the habit of a 

 quick and rapid growth so firmly fixed on them, by a long 

 residence in the north, that when suddenly taken to the south, 

 although the season be long and ample, they continue, from 

 habit, to grow and mature quick, and obtain the name of rare- 

 ripe ; because they do not take half of the time to mature, 

 that those of the same family require, which have never 

 been so changed. Gardeners give us early corn, peas, fruit, 

 and turnips, by getting seed from places far to the north ; 

 and cotton growers renew the vigor of the plant by getting 

 the most northern seed. This practice is common in the 

 case of most plants, and is founded on the supposition that 

 plants do, and can acquire habits. 



