OBSERVATIONS ON THE NEW SYSTEM OF POTTING PLANTS. 
87 
and interesting instance of their application, in the uniform development of 
nearly 500 clusters of flower. Had the specimen been encouraged to continue its 
accumulating vigour throughout the season of 1842, it might ultimately have 
formed a still more striking example ; but, in the present result, proved most satis- 
factorily the possibility of attaining a perfect formation of bloom from a partial 
extent of growth. 
There are perhaps no plants in present cultivation, to which the treatment 
here adverted to is more necessarily applicable than to Stephanotis florihundus and 
Mandevilla suaveolens, two of the most desirable of exotic climbers, each being 
remarkable for their slow and rare development of leaf-buds, owing to a con- 
stitutionally free and exuberant habit of growth ; and the inevitable result, in 
these and all similar instances, when allowed to extend themselves without having 
recourse to the occasional operation of removing the fore shoots, and thereby aiding 
the development of side branches, is an attenuated and useless length of growth, 
which, when it has attained its ultimate vigour, seldom produces more than a few 
scattered bunches of flowers from the extremities. 
The rules from which the foregoing remarks are derived, or on which they are 
founded, may be stated as follows : — 
1st. As the secreted matter (peculiar to all plants) in conjunction with an 
accumulated sap, is essential to the primary formation of flower-buds, and as this 
secreted matter is in strict proportion to the quantity of leaves,^ it may be inferred 
that an equal formation of leaf-buds is essential to a uniform development of bloom. 
2nd. In accordance with a previously stated principle, " that the laws which 
operate in the arrangement of branches, act simultaneously with respect to the 
arrangement of flowers," it may be inferred that a system of cultivation which is 
the most favourable to the production of branches (or axillary growth) will be 
found the most conducive to a liberal development of blossoms. 
3rd. As an excessive vigour is (as a general rule) unfavourable to the forma- 
tion of flower-buds, in preventing an accumulation of sap, it may be inferred that 
the most perfect system of cultivation will be that which is best calculated to 
attain a regular development of bloom from any proportionate extent of matured 
growth. 
It appears from the evidence of general practice, that those principles upon 
which the successful cultivation as regards the growth of plants depends, are 
generally better understood than those which relate to the means of attaining a 
uniform development of bloom ; a fact which is not surprising, from the considera- 
tion, that the causes of the former are such as may be successfully applied apart 
from a knowledge of those reciprocal as well as counteractive influences which 
operate (independently of mechanical means) upon the organs of plants, under 
every modification of treatment or situation to which they are subjected. But a 
reason still more obvious remains to be assigned for this diff'erence-— namely, that 
* First Principles of Horticulture, 141. 
