HUNT'S PATENT GARDEN-POTS. 
89 
bottom drainage, and fill up with pieces of peat from one to four inches square, 
filling the interstices with the fibrous siftings of peat, and pieces of crocks, till the 
pot is quite full ; then plant a seedling or struck cutting of heath plant of similar 
habit, give very little water till the little plant shoots freely; and in this treatment 
is contained the only secret in growing fine specimens." 
Such is the most ingenious and easy mode of potting yet offered to the attention 
of the cultivator ; and though the plan of dispensing with intermediate shifts 
has been recognised nearly fourteen years ago, yet, for this most successful applica- 
tion of the system, the profession is indebted to Mr. D. Beaton, the gardener at 
Shrubland Park, near Ipswich, one of the most eminent horticulturists of the 
present day. 
This novel and original mode of attaining a mature growth in the cultivation of 
plants, may not inappropriately be termed the accumulative system, and involves, 
by its unique mechanical application of soil, one of the most important and essential 
desiderata in all systems of cultivation, and without which all efforts to obtain a 
constitutional vigour and fertility must prove abortive — namely, a uniform 
circulation of moisture. 
HUNT'S PATENT GARDEN-POTS. 
A FEW days after we published our ideas in the March number of the present 
volume, on improving the form of garden-pots, we were favoured by Mr. Hunt, 
29, Queen's Row, Pimlico, with some specimens of a patented article of this 
description, which embodies one of the modifications we then advocated. We are 
now, therefore, induced to recur to the question, and to present illustrations of the 
principle which this patentee has adopted. 
In a communication we have received from Mr. Hunt, he states that the 
originality of his invention has been greatly questioned, and that he is accused of 
having borrowed it from others. Denying this imputation, he appeals to the 
coincidence between our own designs (as given in the number above referred to) 
and the chief peculiarity of his plan ; assuming that, as we unconsciously concurred 
in a suggestion that had been previously carried into effect by him, it is quite 
possible that he may have similarly followed other individuals without at all 
borrowing from them. 
Now, the history of mechanics, manufactures, and every branch of art, furnishes 
abundant evidence that two or more persons may have been occupied at the same time 
in developing really important inventions, without either of them being aware that 
the other was so employed. And in gardening operations, how many instances 
have recently occurred in which there have been great numbers of claimants to 
originality in the use of superior systems of treatment, each pointing primarily to 
VOL. X. NO. CXII, N 
