NEW METHOD OF POTTING PLANTS. 
15 
Several defects, however, belong to the foregoing method of potting. It 
involves a considerable sacrifice of time ; and if, in the consciousness that its 
benefits so far exceeded this or any like evil, to warrant the disregard of the latter, 
we have urgently, on former occasions, recommended its adoption ; we never left 
it to be inferred, that a plan entailing all or more than its advantages, and, simul- 
taneously, avoiding its objectionable features, was not infinitely to be preferred. 
The labour expended in so frequently potting plants is, we are persuaded, by no 
means trifling or of small moment. It is, notwithstanding, overbalanced by its 
good effects on the plants ; since no trouble can be accounted too great that is 
essential to secure the given object. Still, if that trouble could be dispensed with, 
and the same or a better purpose alike be secured, there could be no hesitation in 
declaring the system that accomplished this the superior one. 
Again, by often being shifted, plants inevitably receive a check, which, as we 
assert, is in some degree inimical. To repot a specimen ere its roots appeared on 
the outside of the soil, would be extremely imprudent, as it would carry back the 
system to the old one of shifting into large pots at once, and entail most of its 
disadvantages. To pot it, on the other hand, as is always done, when the roots are 
copiously manifest on the exterior of the earth, is sure to cause the injury or 
crushing of some of the most tender and valuable roots. And as it most usually 
happens that the roots have begun to creep over the side surface of the soil before 
the specimen is repotted, there must some time elapse while they are recovering 
the right direction, and they will further be weakened by having passed beyond 
the general ball of soil. Two or three days, therefore, must be lost by the effort 
of the plant to recover its tendencies, and to lay hold of the fresh earth ; and then 
there will be the enfeeblement which has resulted from the broken, or wrongly- 
directed, or attenuated roots. 
We presume there are those who would argue that such impediments would 
rather benefit than injure flowering plants, by drawing out their latent dispositions 
to bloom. And this view may seem to be justified by the commonly believed 
circumstance that plants which are confined at the roots blossom soonest. A 
mistake, however, exists here. It is not a counteraction of the lateral, but of the 
downward extension of roots, that affects the production of inflorescence. And we 
have seen it demonstrated, that a plant which is not growing in too deep a soil, 
will bloom far sooner and more finely when its roots have no obstruction to their 
horizontal progress, than when they were repeatedly changed into new pots as soon 
as their roots gained the sides of the existing ones. Denying, therefore, that such 
checks are otherwise than prejudicial, we must give a warmer support to any plan 
by which they could be obviated, while the other advantages of the system were 
preserved. 
A third objection to such oft-repeated pottings is, that by the use of various 
soils, and by the frequent manual operations, the texture of the mass of earth will 
differ considerably, and thus it will arise that the water applied will not spread 
