Method of Dwarfing Trees and Shrubs. 225 



management of the silk-worm, and the dwarfing of, at least, 

 Mulberry trees, were among the many novelties with which 

 their journey to China had silently enriched the stores of 

 European knowledge. 



In the fifth century of his Natural History, section 427, 

 Lord Bacon also mentions, that " from May to July, you 

 may take off the bark of any bough being of the bigness of 

 three or four inches, and cover the bare place somewhat 

 above and below, with loam, well tempered with horse-dung, 

 binding it fast down ; then cut off the bough, about Allhol- 

 lontide, in the bare place, and set it in the ground, and it 

 will grow to be a fair tree in one year. 



" The cause may be, for that the baring from the bark 

 keepeth the sap from descending towards winter, and so 

 holdeth it in the bough ; and it may be also, that the loam 

 and horse-dung applied to the bare place, do moisten it and 

 cherish it, and make it more apt to put forth the root. 

 Note, that this may be a general means for keeping up 

 the sap of trees in their boughs, which may serve to other 

 effects." 



This is the general method now practised in China for 

 obtaining by far the greatest number of fruit trees and 

 shrubs. It is extended also to many of the forest trees which 

 they cultivate ; and is a preliminary step in the formation of 

 nearly all their dwarf trees and shrubs. Of the origin of 

 the practice no record seems to have been preserved. It 

 was probably very remote, since we see, on the oldest spe- 

 cimens of porcelain, the same figures of dwarf trees that the 

 Chinese admire at the present day. Radicating plants or 

 boughs, coming accidentally in contact with the ground, and 



vol. iv. G g 



