IxMPROVEMENTS IN GARDEN-POTS. 
43 
into which water may be poured at pleasure. The plan will be of great use in 
the instance of those plants which require a good deal of water in summer, and 
whose foliage is not low or ample enough to shade the pots from the rays of the sun. 
Such plants as Tropoeolum tricolorum and T. hrachyceras would be particularly bene- 
fited by the process ; for it is notorious that they often suffer, and perish sooner in the 
season than they otherwise would, by the exposure of their pots to the sun s agency. 
Succulent and rapid-growing plants, too, that are half aquatic, as the species of 
Mimulus and Gloxinia^ Besleria piilchella, some Gesneras^ Achimenes, &c., would 
derive the greatest advantage from the plan. It would also be extremely serviceable 
to those dwarf plants that thrive best when plunged, but which could not 
conveniently be so treated. 
But the defect of the plan is that the water which the sides of the pot are to 
contain has to be supplied at an aperture inside the pot, (see d in Fig. 1,) about a 
quarter of an inch below the edge. 1 1 is placed there of course for the sake of 
concealment, and is objectionable, because it will be next to impossible to keep the 
soil from falling into the cavity, or water from entering it, at undesirable times, 
when it is being administered to the plant. We think a far more convenient 
method, represented in Fig. 2, is that of having the apertures for the admission of 
water on the outside, as at ^, preventing them from being 
unsightly by making them in the form of two rude and 
very small handles to the pot. The chance of soil enter- 
ing would thus entirely be done away with ; and water 
could be introduced or abstracted with far more ease 
and certainty. Thus modified, the plan would be a really 
good one, and would unquestionably be duly patronised. 
All these slight improvements, however, sink into comparative insignificance 
before the radical changes we are desirous of seeing effected in the construction of 
garden-pots, since such changes very materially involve the health and productive- 
ness of all exotics whatever that are grown in this way. Our opinions concerning 
the improvements that are yet to be made in garden-pots include three particulars, 
— shallowness, more thorough drainage, and the means of letting air freely 
penetrate the soil. 
That shallow pots are of the utmost importance to flowering plants in promot- 
ing their beauty, every day's observation, more and more fully convinces us. No 
gardener would now think of letting his Vines or his Peach-trees have a border as 
deep as it is broad, or, in other words, sufi*er their roots to extend downwards as 
far as they do horizontally. He would at oiice anticipate (and justly) a failure in 
his crops from such a proceeding. And yet the cultivator of exotics takes a 
course which is quite as unwise, when he puts his plants in pots that have the 
same depth as diameter. The grand rule in all culture, whether for fruit or 
flowers, (for the means that will produce the former must bring the latter,) should 
be to keep the roots near the surface ; and this can only be done by positively pre- 
