Method of Dwarfing Trees and Shrubs. 



taking root, would readily suggest the plan. The improve- 

 ment of denuding a circular portion of the bark, might also 

 have been pointed out by fortuitous occurrences, such as the 

 friction of one bough against another. 



The practice is correctly stated by Lord Bacon. That 

 mentioned by Dr. Howison, in the Transactions * of the 

 Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and 

 Commerce, is certainly not the method followed by the 

 Chinese. 



The Pterocarpus Marsupium, one of the most beautiful 

 of the large trees of the East Indies, and which grows in the 

 greatest perfection about Malacca, affording, by its elegant, 

 wide-expanding boughs, and thick spreading pinnated 

 leaves, a shade equally delightful with the far-famed Tama- 

 rind tree, is readily propagated by cuttings of all sizes, if 

 planted, even after the pieces have been cut for many months, 

 notwithstanding they appear quite dry, and fit only, for the 

 fire. I have witnessed some of three, four, five, six, and 

 seven inches in diameter, and ten or twelve feet long, come 

 to be fine trees in a few years. While watching the trans- 

 formation of the log into the tree, I have been able to trace 

 the progress of the radicles from the buds which began to 

 shoot from the upper part of the stump, a few days after it 

 had been placed in the ground, and marked their progress 

 till they reached the earth. By elevating the bark, minute 

 fibres are seen to descend contemporaneously as the bud 

 shoots into a branch. In a few weeks these are seen to in- 

 terlace each other. In less than two years the living fibrous 

 system is complete ; in five years no vestige of its log origin 

 * See volume xxv. page 14. 



