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XLVTIL An Account of an improved Method of obtaining 

 Early Crops of Peas, after severe Winters. By Thomas 

 Andrew Knight, Esq. F. R. S. fyc. President. 



Read May 23d, 1823. 



Considering even trivial improvements to be important 

 relatively to the management of those species of plants upon 

 the culture of which much labour and capital are annually 

 expended, for private use and for the supply of the public 

 markets, I address to the Horticultural Society the following 

 account of a mode of obtaining an early crop of Peas, which 

 I have practised with great success in the present spring. 



When severe winters, such as the last, have proved fatal 

 to crops of Peas sowed in the preceding autumn, many gar- 

 deners have experienced the advantages of raising other 

 plants in pots, with artificial heat, early in the spring, and 

 subsequently transplanting them into the common soil : and 

 the object of the present communication is only to describe 

 an improvement in the mode of repeating this operation. 



In the present spring my garden, owing to its soil being 

 cold, and the climate rather inhospitable, did not contain, in 

 the end of February, a single living Pea plant ; and I pur- 

 posely delayed the experiment, which I proceed to relate, 

 till the first day of March. Upon that day the ground was 

 prepared, and part of the seed sown, as usual, in rows, where 

 the plants were to remain ; at the same time other Peas, of 

 the same early kind, were sown in circles within the circum- 



