378 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
March 18 . 
the public with his plaister for the renovation of de¬ 
cayed trees, and as we have vainly endeavoured to find 
reasons for differing from our opinion on this subject 
published two years since, we may be excused for quoting 
what we then stated. Mr. Forsyth laid claim to success 
in his research after this sanitative composition; for he 
published “ an account of a method of cure invented and 
practised” by himself; and government gave him 
£1,500 for the discovery. They proposed to double the 
sum upon certain facts being established by him; but 
in the meantime Mr. Knight, the late president of the 
Horticultural Society, stept forth in the discharge of a 
distasteful public duty—to dispute Mr. Forsyth’s title to 
any reward. We have had occasion to examine minutely 
into the merits of the contest, and regret to have arrived 
at the conclusion, that the composition Mr. Forsyth 
employed was borrowed from Hitt, and other writers 
upon the cultivation of trees; and that the cures he 
alleged to have effected were not of the extent or im¬ 
portance certified. 
The plaister trumpeted abroad by Mr. Forsyth for healing 
the wounds and restoring the vigour of decayed trees was 
thus compounded. One bushel of fresh cow-dung; half-a- 
bushel of lime rubbish, that from the ceilings of rooms is 
preferable, or powdered chalk; half a-busliel of wood ashes; 
one-sixteenth of a bushel of sand ; the three last sifted fine. 
The whole to be mixed and beaten together until they form 
a fine plaister. 
Now there is nothing in this compound sufficiently 
differing from other compounds . recommended by his 
contemporaries and predecessors to entitle him to call 
it his invention ; but, supposing that an arbitrary differ¬ 
ence in the proportions of the constituents suffices to 
sustain such claims, still what can be said in defence of 
his assertion, that that composition has filled with young 
wood the hollow trunks of timber trees, and that he had 
in his possession parts of the trunk of a tree in which 
the new wood, by the efficacious power of his “ poor 
tree’s plaister,” had been made to incorporate with the 
old ; and that trees so cured were rendered as fit for the 
navy as though they had never been injured ? Every 
gardener, every physiologist, knows that this could not 
be true. New wood and new bark may be induced to 
grow over old wood, but no power, no application, will 
induce them to unite to it. It is quite true that Dr. 
Lettsom, Dr. Anderson, and others, who ought to have 
been more circumspect, certified that Mr. Forsyth’s 
statements contained “nothing more than the truth;” 
but they afterwards either acknowledged that they did 
so on evidence that ought not to have been deemed 
sufficient, or that they meant no more than to testify in 
favour of “ the utility ” of Mr. Forsyth’s plaister. Of 
this there can be no doubt, because every application 
excluding the rain and air from a tree’s wound is of 
j great “utility.” It is also quite true that Mr. Forsyth 
received a parliamentary grant of money, but it was 
granted upon inconclusive evidence ; and, as Mr. Ivnight 
observes, affords a much better proof that he was paid 
for an important discovery than that he made one. The 
whole of the correspondence on the subject, between 
Mr. Knight and Dr. Lettsom, can be referred to in the 
74th and 75th volumes of The Gentleman $ Magazine, 
and may be read as a warning how literary controversy 
should not be conducted. Dr. Lettsom had rashly 
attested to the truth of that of which he was not a com- I 
petent judge, and had not the noble candour to seek a 
fair examination; whilst Mr. Knight poured forth in¬ 
sinuations and charges in a wrathful tone, very unbe¬ 
fitting either a philosopher or a gentleman. 
In the course of the controversy, Mr. Knight very 
needlessly charged Dr. Anderson with acting from in¬ 
terested motives, and with having written the chief 
portion of Mr. Forsyth’s works. This Mr. Forsyth 
denies, and as we have no evidence to the contrary, 
there the matter must rest. It is certain, however, that 
he accepted paragraphs from the pen of Dr. Anderson, 
for the whole of that suggested in the following letter, 
will be found unacknowledged in the preface to the 
second edition of his Treatise on the Culture and Ma¬ 
nagement of Fruit Trees. 
DR, JAMES ANDERSON TO MR. FORSYTH. 
Isle worth, 25th Jan., 1803. 
Dear Sir,—In our haste not to miss the coach I find that 
we forgot the vine cutting, which I send along with this; if 
1 you think it will be the worse for being out of the ground, I 
can spare you another, if you choose it, after the frost is’ 
gone. 
In reflecting on the passage we read in Mr. Knight’s 
pamphlet, I think you should quote the whole of that para¬ 
graph, as it will give you a fine opportunity of answering 
his question very handsomely, which you may do somewhat 
to the following effect:— 
“ I feel myself much indebted to Mr. Knight for the very 
handsome compliment he has, unintentionally it is true, 
here paid to my practice. If I could be vain of anything of 
the kind, I certainly should he so of this, because it comes 
from one who will not be suspected of intending to flatter, 
and it exhibits my plaster in a much more conspicuous light 
than I should otherwise perhaps have thought of; I there¬ 
fore shall answer his question with pleasure. From the 
manner in which the question is put, it is evident that 
Mr. K. thinks that the operation of cutting over a decayed 
peach tree is attended with so much danger that it is im¬ 
possible to prevent a great proportion of those which have 
been so cut over from dying. In this opinion I believe he 
will be corroborated by a great majority' of those gardeners 
who have attempted it in the common mode of practice; I 
have, however, the pleasure to be able to assure him, that 
from the time that I applied my salve to these wounded 
trees, which is now a great many year's, it escapes my recol¬ 
lection, and that of others who have been constantly 
employed in the gardens of Kensington, if a single tree, 
whether apiicot, peach, or nectarine, has died from being 
cut over when under my mode of management, altlio’ on 
some occasions that operation has been performed under 
circumstances extremely unfavourable, in particular four 
trees-peach [and so on, naming the particular kinds 
of fruit trees that were dug out and laid upon the heap of 
mould exposed to the frost, and the circumstances attending 
them]. Nor is it a few only of these kinds of trees that 
have been cut down by me and renewed; for I find, upon a 
survey made with a view to answer this question, that there 
are now growing in Kensington gardens no fewer than 
(sixty) peach, nectarine, and apricot tree's that have been so 
cut down and renewed, and which are now in as flourishing 
a state as I could wish trees of that sort to be. Neither 
were these operations performed in secret, or with a view to 
concealment of any sort, but openly, under the eye and with 
the assistance of the gardeners employed in that ground, 
who have all had opportunities of observing every step in 
the progress of these experiments, if they chose it. 
“ As to the allegations of Mr. K., that if such decayed trees 
have actually set out new shoots at all, it must have been 
from the roots only, and nowhere else—the short answer to 
