Management of Plants during a Voyage from India. 141 



should soon perish, or, if indeed a few of them should survive their 

 transmission, that they should be so sickly upon reaching Europe as 

 to perish presently after. I would recommend in the first place 

 that plants already advanced in age, with a strong root and thick 

 stem, should invariably be selected, and that only such grafts be 

 chosen as have already been firmly established for two or three years 

 on old healthy stocks. 



In packing, the following directions particularly require to be ob- 

 served. It has been the custom to make the chests very large, and 

 to crowd into such chests as many plants as they will hold ; this prac- 

 tice has had, amongst others, this bad effect, that Captains however 

 well disposed at first to pay the plants every attention, have soon 

 found the cases troublesome, unwieldy, and unsightly. No case 

 should be more than three feet long, eighteen inches in width, and 

 sixteen in depth below the roof; I have taken these dimensions 

 from a due consideration of the places where plants are generally 

 stowed on board ship, viz. on the poop, or in front of the cuddy. The 

 depth of the roof should be sixteen inches more, so that the shut- 

 ters, when opened, will be the same depth as the sides of the boxes. 

 The breadth of the upper rail should be five inches, which wdl 

 admit of a piece of painted canvas sufficiently large to cover the 

 whole sides, to be rolled upon it, and fixed to each side. 



I would here observe that I would on no account use the common 

 tarred canvas, which is a very imperfect defence against ram and 

 sea spray, and in the next place, that whenever a number of chests 

 are to be placed in a row close to each other, it would be prefer- 

 able to use one piece of canvas instead of many. Some attention 

 should also be paid to the neatness of the appearance of the cases, 

 as Captains are very unwilling to allow the deck to be occupied by 

 unsightly objects; they should be well clamped together with iron 

 and painted. On no account should holes be bored m the ends fb 

 passingrope handles through; the latter are perfectly useless. The 



