ITS HABIT AND CULTURE. 
397 
keep it dwarf and bushy, for it naturally 
grows in long shoots upwards, and gets bare 
at the bottom. The plant, therefore, should 
be grown without heat, have plenty of air, 
and be only shifted from one pot to another 
when the present pot is full, that is, when the 
roots are growing round the sides. There are 
other plants which require no particular ma- 
nagement, so far as pruning goes, because they 
grow naturally into a handsome pyrimidal 
form. Eicartoni for instance, and Formosa 
elegans, are of a handsome habit, and grow as 
symmetrical as a Fir-tree. The leading shoot 
must not be checked ; lateral shoots will come 
out strongest at the bottom ; and the taller the 
plant grows the more handsome it becomes. 
The blooms too come out at the base of all the 
leaves, so that the plant is literally covered, 
we were going to say, but as the blooms hang 
down it would be an improper term — loaded 
with flowers the entire length of the branches. 
All we have to guard against in the growing 
of Fuchsias is rapid vegetation ; they cannot 
be grown both fast and handsome; the one 
is incompatible with the other. If they grow 
rapidly, the leaves are distant, the stems more 
bare, the branches more lanky, and the whole 
plant poor. If they are grown moderately, 
without excitement, without heat, and not over 
potted, you have a plant rich with foliage and 
flower ; also, inasmuch as all the fine kinds of 
Fuchsia bloom abundantly in proportion as 
their leaves are abundant, the same number 
of leaves and flowers that might be straggling 
over a six-feet plant, will be found on one of 
three feet, and it wants no great wisdom to 
enable us to decide that the smaller plant is 
the better of the two. It has been the fashion 
to praise the gardener who could grow the 
largest plant in the smallest period of time : 
this was a sad perversion of skill. There is 
no more merit in growing a thing six feet 
high than one of three ; there is no gardener 
but is able to do it if size be his object. All 
this nonsense has pretty well passed away, for 
independent of the additional risk in keeping 
plants that have been greatly excited, they 
are not in the eyes even of persons unac- 
quainted with gardening half so rich and 
beautiful in appearance, and a judge who knew 
his province could condemn the larger ones as 
unworthy the skill of a British gardener. 
"We do not mean to say that there may not be 
cases where rapid growth is everything. In 
the case of new things there may be a great 
object in getting up plants to a saleable size, 
or in growing a plant fast for the sake of pro- 
pagating it ; but we unhesitatingly say, that 
to grow plants beautiful, and serviceable, and 
healthy, they must not be excited too much, 
and a slow, or at least a moderate growth, is in- 
dispensable. We have seen immense Fuchsias 
exhibited, and seen a written boast placed 
upon them that they were grown from cuttings 
since such a time ; and what ha\e they been ? 
Why, the flowers a long away apart, the leaves 
scarce, the stem naked, at least comparatively 
so, the plant ugly and unsightly. The public 
have seen this, and the system is as soundly 
condemned by them as they used to be by us. 
It is not difficult to do this. A boy who has 
not served a year of his time could put a 
plant into a large pot and apply treatment for 
rapid growth, as easily as he could put it in a 
small one and shift it and keep it cool. Among 
the various habits of Fuchsias, none are better 
than those of a pyramidical form ; and we are 
disposed to prefer them, because, when well 
done, they are bushy and wide at the bottom, 
narrowing to the top, and flowering all over ; 
but if there be properties in a flower you 
must make the best of it. It is quite possible 
to have a plant too prolific of bloom, it is the 
fault of Chandleria, and to make this a proper 
object, though there are better flowers now 
coming on better plants, the blooms should be 
thinned as carefully as fruit. The buds will 
come as thick at the ends of the branches as 
a bunch of grapes, and the annoyance is, that 
the plant is never fairly in flower. The only 
way to grow and show this plant handsome, 
is to deprive it of two-thirds of the buds at 
the end while young, and especially of the 
smaller ones, for they are a complete eyesore, 
and by removing them the rest are thrown 
better into flower, and of a better colour. The 
idea of thinning blooms never seems to occur 
to any body, but it is as essential as thinning 
of fruit, and it improves those that remain 
more than an unpractised man can imagine. 
There are other plants in the same predica- 
ment, and especially all those that bloom in 
bunches at the ends of their branches ; but 
they cannot be made good, because the dispo- 
sition to bloom thus renders the other part of 
the plant scanty. While upon the subject of 
habit and flower we ought once for all to in- 
sist that no self-coloured flower, or even ap- 
proaching a self, can be esteemed ; if the out- 
side be crimson, the corolla should be dark 
purple ; if the outside be pink, the purple may 
be lighter, but it would be better dark ; if the 
outside be pale or white, a dark crimson or 
scarlet corolla would be tolerable, but even 
then the less the corolla is like the sepals and 
tube the better. Again, the sepals should be 
all of a colour, not pale and darker, nor pale 
and green, though we do not mean in the 
present infant state of the flower to condemn 
all such, for there would be some among the 
condemned that would be sadly wanted ; but 
we cannot admit that any possessing these 
characteristics are good show flowers, and we 
should assuredly turn them out as soon as we 
