106 
which makes it crust over, and it is really the 
easiest and best remedy you can apply to plants 
tolerably rooted and inclined to strike again. 
N. B. If a large blooming plant, or any other 
one you remove, has been in the pot but one 
year since it was last transplanted, you must 
slip it out of the pot with all its earth about it, 
and although its fibres may have reached the 
outside, they will not be so large and numerous, 
or so matted together as the older plants that 
have remained in one pot two clear years. 
You need not therefore shake the earth from 
it, but with a sharp knife cut the fibres and 
earth away till you reduce it to the size of a 
cricket-ball, or rather larger, as much depends 
on the size and age of your plant. 
But some will say that this is not a complete 
remove, because there is a ball of old earth left 
the root ; this is true ; but the earth, old 
as it is, hath not lost its virtue, none of it is 
eaten out but that which is next to the sides of 
where the roots run in great num- 
he large root, of which these are tlie 
or fibres, having used this remaining 
ball of earth only as a passage leading to the 
sides of the pot, draws very few of the salts 
from it ; and did I not experimentally know 
that the earth in the middle of the pot did not 
