By Richard Anthony Salisbury, Esq. 39 



Being yet ignorant of the habits of the plant, however, all 

 these first capsules were suffered to remain too long, and they 

 shed their seed on the gravel, where, to my surprise, in about 

 ten days after, not less than twenty young seedling plants 

 appeared. 



Having now studied it both in a botanical and horticultural 

 sense, and having become better acquainted with it, I re- 

 moved the parent plant to the south window of my library, 

 clipping off one or more ripe capsules from it daily, till the 

 end of September, about which time they ceased to produce 

 perfect seeds. The plant from Messrs. Colvill succeeded 

 equally well while the fine weather lasted ; but being planted 

 in highly manured earth, damped off early in October; 

 whereas the other in poorer soil continued flowering all 

 October, though with diminished lustre, and did not finally 

 decay till the middle of November. 



In the mean while, I learnt an important lesson from the 

 young seedling plants in the gravel. After transplanting 

 half a dozen into separate pots, three into thumb-pots, and 

 three into pots of a larger size, filled with peat sand and 

 pure gravel, equal parts, I transplanted a few more into 

 still larger pots, having no small pots left. Of all these, I 

 observed those in the thumb-pots throve best ; but of those 

 in the largest pots, two damped off by degrees, first one 

 branch at the bottom, then another, and finally the principal 

 stem, this decay always beginning close to the earth. I 

 therefore left off watering them at the top of the pot entirely, 

 placing them in pans, into which I poured more or less water 

 as I saw occasion. 



As the seeds I collected and distributed last year, have 



