ACCLIMATIZING. 
543 
severe with us, as to rend asunder the trunks 
of our indigenous forest trees." 
Annuals are no more susceptible of change 
than perennials or biennials. The seedlings 
of anytldng and everything are more or less 
changed from the parent in some peculiarity. 
Therefore, what is attributed to annuals, may, 
with equal propriety, be attributed to all seed- 
ling plants. Nobody will dispute these changes. 
It might be years before any of these seedlings 
became more hardy: perhaps in some families 
they never would. The potato and dahlia 
seem as susceptible of injury from frost as 
ever ; for though one may seem a little less 
injured than others on particular occasions, 
none have approached to what may be called 
hardy. We have no doubt that, if on the 
appearance of a plant that stood frost better 
than the rest, the seeds were perseveringly 
saved ; and the same thing observed from 
time to time, a step in that path might fre- 
quently be gained ; but there are hundreds of 
subjects which, though perpetuated by seeds 
from year to year, have not been noticed as to 
that one point, and therefore to this day are 
no better. Sir Joseph Banks gives one or two 
instances of plants becoming more robust 
after a few years' succession of seeds; but the 
conclusion must not always be drawn from first 
appearances : cause and effect should be more 
■minutely examined. He says : — 
"In the year 1791, some seeds of Zizania 
aquatica were procured from Canada, and 
sown in a pond at Spring Grove, near Houns- 
low ; it grew, and produced strong plants, 
which ripened their seeds ; those seeds vege- 
tated in the succeeding spring, but the plants 
they produced were weak, slender, not half so 
tall as those of the first generation, and grew 
in the shallowest water only ; the seeds of 
these plants produced others the next year, 
sensibly stronger than their parents of the 
second year. 
"In this manner the jilants proceeded, 
springing up every year from the seeds of the 
preceding one, e\ery year becoming visibly 
stronger and larger, and rising from deeper 
parts of the pond, till the last year, 1804, 
when several of the plants were six feet in 
height, and the whole pond was in every part 
covered with them as thick as wheat grows 
on a well -managed field, 
" Heie we have an experiment which proves 
that an annual plant, scarce able to endure 
tlie ungenial summer of England, has become, 
in fourteen generations, as strong and as 
vigorous as our indigenous plants are, and as 
perfect in all its parts as in its native climate." 
With great deference to Sir Joseph, we do 
not think there was any proof whatever that 
the plant was scarcely able to endure the sum- 
mer, and has btcome, in fourteen generations, 
as strong and as vigorous as our indigenous 
plants are, because, for all we can see, the 
plant was already so. The very first seeds 
that were sown, grew and produced strong 
plants, which ripened their seeds; there- 
fore there was no indication of tenderness, 
nor is there anything extraordinary in 
the fact, that the seeds so ripened came up 
weaker than imported seeds, nor in their 
gradually improving. It is well to point out 
seed-saving and sowing as the only means of 
procuring from a tender plant a race of hardy 
ones ; but it is a fallacy to look upon success 
as a matter of course. The olfspring must be 
examined, and any single plant which stands 
frost better than the rest, should be alone 
saved from, because it- is by trifling degrees 
that we can produce such changes, and, we 
fear, not to any great extent under any cir- 
cumstances. The following does not say 
much either for the accuracy of the authoi-'s 
conclusions or the depth of his inquiries upon 
the subject ; but the conclusion is the same as 
our own ; for we insist that it is impossible to 
alter the constitution of a plant, though it is not 
impossible to raise new ones more hardy than 
the present. Sir Joseph says : — 
" Some of GUI' most common flowering 
shrubs have been long introduced into the 
gardens ; the bay-tree has been cultivated 
more than two centuries ; it is mentioned by 
Tusser, in the list of garden plants inserted 
in his book, called ' Five Hundred Points of 
Good Husbandry,' printed in 1573. 
" The laurel was introduced by Master 
Cole, a merchant, living at Hampstead, some 
years before 1629, when Parkinson published 
his ' Paradisus Terrestris,' and at that liine 
we had in our gardens, oranges, myrtles of 
three sorts, laurustinus, cypress, Phillyrea, 
Alaternus, Arbutus, a cactus brought from 
Bermuda, and the passion-flower, which last 
had flovtcred here, and showed a remarkable 
particularity, by rising from the ground near 
a month sooner if a seedling plant, than if it 
grew from roots brought trom Virginia. 
" jLU these were at that time rather tender 
plants ; Master Cole cast a blanket over the 
top of his laurel, in i'rosty weather, to protect 
it; but though nearly two centuries have 
since elapsed, not one of them will yet bear 
with certainty our winter frosts. 
" Though some of these shrubs ripen their 
seeds in this climate, it never has been, I 
believe, the custom of gardeners to sow them 4 
some are propagated by suckers and cuttings, 
and others by imported seeds; consequently, 
the very identical laurel introduced by Master 
Cole, and some others of the plants enumerated 
by Parkinson, are now actually growing in 
our gardens ; no wonder, then, that these 
original shrubs have not become hardier, 
