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PLANTS IN POTS AND MANAGEMENT OF CUTTINGS. 
It is remarked, that the purchasers of plants rarely succeed in keeping them in 
any degree of health for many weeks after they come out of the nurseryman's 
hands ; this holds good particularly with those who place them in the window of 
dwelling houses. Plants so situated labour under certain disadvantages; but it 
cannot be denied, that in public-houses, in the rooms of poor, and even dirty 
cottages — where it might be supposed that the pores of the leaves must be 
inevitably closed by carbonaceous matter, or dust — many healthy and beautiful 
specimens are to be found, which, if we except actual cleanliness of the foliage, 
fairly rival and eclipse those of the greenhouse. We have in our eye at this 
moment the window of a small, low, and dark room, occupied by a shoemaker, but 
a most enthusiastic admirer of the geranium (Pelargonium), wherein flowers of the 
finest description, produced upon well-grown plants, are always to be seen. How 
are we to account for these things ! how reconcile them with the almost inevitable 
failure of many persons, who expend pounds every year upon plants, which in spite 
of every attention dwindle and fade away ! 
Another fact is worthy of notice; it is this : — If we pass through the streets of 
a country town, we can scarcely fail to observe that some particular genus or species 
abounds and flourishes with luxuriance, while plants of more easy culture appear 
miserably unhealthy. Thus in the town of Abingdon, Berks, we saw, two years 
since, in almost every window, specimens of Fuchsia (Conica nearly without excep- 
tion if our memory be correct) that could scarcely be found in the very best 
collections, and growing in pots of two and three inches diameter at the rims ; the 
soil was heaped up round the stem, so as to preclude watering at top ; hence the 
water must have been supplied by absorption from the feeder pans. We do not 
recollect that a healthy geranium was to be seen in any of the windows of that 
ancient town. We can assign no better reason for these anomalies than what is 
found in the trite old Latin line — Omnia non possumus omnes ; and therefore shall 
quit digression, and proceed at once to the direct object we proposed to ourselves 
when we took up our pen. 
Referring the reader to the observations upon " Potting," which commence with 
that word in the article on Chorizema Ovata, No. 43, page 155, we add our 
unqualified assent to their wisdom and practical fidelity ; in truth, half the failures 
of amateur cultivators may be ascribed to the texture of the soil, which being " put 
in loose, or left in holes, the plant never properly thrives, but languishes" to its 
death. Let any one turn out the ball of a plant which he purchases of a skilful 
nurseryman, by reversing the pots, and while he supports the earth with the fingers 
tapping the rim gently against a board or other resisting solid material, and he will 
rarely fail to discover that the soil is in the condition described — that is, compactly 
and firmly pressed everywhere, around and among the roots, without holes, and 
with a certain quantity of chips of pots or other open matters to serve as drainage 
for superfluous water. 
VOL. IV. — -NO. XLVI. G G 
