338 REMINISCENCES OF A VOYAGE TO AND FROM CHINA. 
during the voyage ; thus they would be secure from monkeys, goats, or 
other animals on board. The oldest, stoutest portable plants should be 
chosen, and particularly those which have been for a year or two esta¬ 
blished in pots; for we found that such bear the vicissitudes of the 
voyage better than young and recently-potted plants. As proof, we 
may allude to their dwarfed trees, which, when brought home, always 
arrive in good condition. Boxes should be employed; but their sides 
and ends need not be above fourteen inches high, with strong handles 
for the convenience of hoisting them in and out of the ship. The pots 
should be plunged in moss, or in some other soft material retentive of 
moisture. 
Throughout the voyage the plants should be kept rather dry than 
otherwise; they may receive accidental showers, which are usually 
soon dried up again, but by no means kept so moist as to excite 
vigorous growth. Shading with thin canvass in the middle of the day, 
when the ship is near the equator, will be of more use than any other 
treatment that can be afforded. 
Besides taking too much care of our collection, and treating the 
plants in the same way as if they had been in a British conservatory, 
we committed another error, and that was by our endeavour to bring 
so many. The stern balcony-—certainly the best place in the ship— 
was chiefly taken up by the plants consigned to Sir J. Banks, and 
other things belonging to the captain; and having, by our own choice, 
had so large a portion of the poop-deck given up to us, we could not think 
of encumbering the captain’s private apartments with boxes or single 
plants, where, however, they would have been much more safely trans¬ 
ported. This confession and opinion is confirmed by the success attend¬ 
ing the introduction of one or only a few plants, in a box which may be 
placed in a spare quarter-gallery in the stern balcony, or other apart¬ 
ment, secure from changes of weather, or out of the way of the business 
of the ship. It is almost unnecessary to add, that sea-water, whether 
spray or from washing the decks, should never be allowed to fall upon 
either the leaves or roots. 
The constitutional habit of plants renders them more or less capable 
of being safely transported. Bulbs and tubers require little or no care 
in conveying them from distant parts. Herbaceous or half-shrubby 
plants, with fleshy or thick fibrous roots, such as chrysanthemums, are 
easily brought over ; because, as their growth is a continued production 
of new shoots and new roots from the collet, the loss of either for a 
short time is seldom fatal : so all plants, trees, or shrubs that stole, 
are less liable to be destroyed by atmospheric changes than others which 
do not; and the most difficult of all, perhaps, are those trees and shrubs 
