TIE POSE OF PLANTS. 
89 
is every reason to believe that the application of water at this 
time is injurious to them all, by keeping them in a state of par¬ 
tial, but untimely, excitement, which injures their growth, and 
still more their flowering, when the season of activity comes round. 
Plants which in their natural climate have a season of perfect 
drought, or only such moistening as they receive from the even¬ 
ing dew forming upon them, are most seriously affected by the 
lodgment of water at the roots. They damp off, become covered 
with small parasitical fungi, or lose their leaves like deciduous 
plants, although naturally they are evergreens. This is very 
strikingly the case with the hard-wooded shrubs of Australia, 
Southern Africa, and similar places ; and it is to such plants that 
the ignorant are most apt to give water at their own time, when 
they begin to look sickly, from want of air, cold chills, or other 
causes. It seems that such parties confound two things which 
are very distinct—an evergreen plant and an evergrowing one. 
There is, perhaps, no evergrowing plant but such as are ever- 
dying in another part of their structure, as is the case with the 
mosses on the more humid bogs; and the fact of their constantly 
dying at the under end while they are growing at the upper, 
shows that even they cannot stand the severity of being conti¬ 
nually soaked in .water. When the upper part of a plant in a pot 
and the surface of the mould, both have the appearance of being 
too dry, it very often happens that the sickliness actually arises 
from too much humidity in the under part; for if the plant is 
shaken out of the pot, the lower portion of the mould will be 
found over damp and clammy, and the more tender fibres of the 
roots in a state of decomposition, and reduced almost to jelly. 
If this has not proceeded too far, the plants may be kept alive, 
by trimming off all the roots to the quick, introducing a drain¬ 
age of potsherds, with kindly loam over, barely moistened ; stir¬ 
ring the mould on the surface of the pot; and, if the plant is of 
sufficient value, placing it in a moderate heat, and supplying an 
exceedingly small quantity of water, until it is again established ; 
—but if this is done immediately before the natural season for 
the plant coming into action and flower, the growth will be feeble 
and the flowering bad. Therefore, plants which are supposed 
to be thus affected should be shaken from the pots with the mould 
in a ball, and examined during the winter ; and if the roots have 
begun to decay from the stagnation of moisture about them, they 
VOL. hi. no. iv. M 
