1032 THE PRACTICAL GARDENER. [Mar. 



those divisions, so exactly made, were originally intended for, or 

 at what period of the pottery art they were adopted, is not very 

 satisfactorily known ; hut it is of the less importance, seeing 

 that this division into sizes is hoth useful and convenient, alike 

 both to the potter and to the horticulturist. It may be laid 

 down as a rule that, in the process of shifting plants, those that 

 occupy the size called large sixties, should be shifted into those 

 called small forty-eights, which is the next size larger, and so 

 of the rest. It, however, sometimes, and indeed often hap- 

 pens, that a greater shift may with propriety be made, but this 

 will depend entirely upon the state of the plant, its nature, 

 health, and habits. Henderson, of Wood Hall, who, with Mr. 

 M*Nab, the very intelligent curator of the Edinburgh Botanic 

 Garden, have carried the culture of tlie genus Erica to a 

 greater degree of perfection than any other cultivators, makes 

 the following remark upon shifting plants, in the Caledonian 

 Hort. Mem. " Never shift any plant till the pot be full of 

 roots and, en j)a^ssant, this holds good with all plants, 

 " when the plants get large, several of them will continue in 

 good health for three or four years without shifting, and flower 

 well. I have," he says, plants of Erica rclorta," a rather 

 delicate species, ** in pots seven inches diameter, which are 

 very bushy, being eighteen inches across, and fourteen inches 

 high above the pot. Erica infundibuliformis, two and a 

 half feet in diameter, and two feet nine inches' high. Erica 

 pilosa between five and six feet high, and three feet across, in 

 pots eleven inches in diameter. These have not been shifted for 

 five years, and are in high health, and covered with strong fine 

 flowers, from the mouth of the pot to the top of the plant." 



We may here also observe, that nothing looks so preposter- 

 ous and bad as a mere twig stuck in the middle of a huge pot, 

 which is sufiiciently capacious for a plant ten times the size. 



It is, however, only upon extraordinary occasions that a 

 gi'eater shift can take place at once, than that from large sixties 

 to large forty-eights. Sickly or slow growing plants may be 

 often benefited by being taken out of one size, and the ball re- 

 duced, the roots pruned and singled out, and repotted again into 

 the same sized pot. Ericas^ and similar feeble-rooted plants, 

 seldom require a greater shift than from one size to that next 



