mame 
e 
the warm to the cold climate. It may be added, 
that it is frequently more advantageous to re- 
move animals which are still young, because, 
from their being more pliant at this age, they 
habituate themselves readily to the change, and 
in the end endure the unfavourable circumstances 
to which they are exposed. A very sudden and 
powerful change is, however, better endured by 
the adult animal, whose frame being more ma- 
tured, is better capable of resisting the shock. 
With the domestic animals, we commonly find 
that temperate climates, where they are exposed 
but little to sudden changes of the atmosphere, 
are in general those which agree best with their 
natures, and where they are least subject to de- 
formity and disease. In these situations they 
also become more mild and tractable, as their 
natures assume the general aspect of the climate, 
while they seem to acquire a certain degree of 
rudeness and asperity from the contagious influ- 
ence of an unhospitable region. See article Cu1- 
MATE. 
ACCLIMATATION OF PLANTS. The accus- 
toming of plants to thrive in a climate which 
differs widely from their natural one, and which, 
previous to their being accustomed to it, would 
damage their organism or’ derange their func- 
tions. Some writers distinguish between acclima- 
tation and naturalization ; and, after assigning to 
the latter an extensive scope of influence, and 
even identifying it with many of the achieve- 
ments of cultivation, they conclude that acclima- 
tation either operates within a very limited range 
or dees not at all exist. But when naturalization 
means the mere removal of a plant to a country 
of very similar climate and condition to that in 
which it is indigenous, it exhibits no phenomena, 
| possesses no character, and cannot claim consid- 
| eration as either a principle or an art in cultiva- 
tion ; and when, on the other hand, it means such 
treatment of exotic plants, whether by dressing, 
| by forcing, by repressing, by hybridizing, or by 
any other appliance, as fits them to sustain with- 
out injury a lowness of temperature or a severity 
of weather which would formerly have destroyed 
them, it achieves exactly the same results as ac- 
climatation, and is perfectly identical with that 
process in everything but the name. The blun- 
der of any gardener in Great Britain who receives 
a new plant from a hot country, nurses it for a 
time in the hothouse, transfers it gradually and 
cautiously to the open ground, and says he has 
acclimatated it, while it really possesses so much 
constitutional hardiness that he might at once 
and with all safety have placed it in the open 
border,—or who receives a new plant from a tem- 
perate country, gives it the same treatment as 
the great majority of his hardy plants, finds it 
languishing under his eye, restores its energy and 
establishes its health by some unusual method of 
culture, and says he has acclimatated it, while it 
really grew in such peculiar circumstances in its 
native country as ought to have suggested to him 
ACCLIMATATION OF PLANTS. 
from the first what sort of treatment was re- 
quisite for its prosperity,—these blunders, no 
matter how often repeated, can neither abolish 
nor mystify any one of the thousand well-proved 
facts respecting the controlling power which cul- 
ture exerts upon the habits of plants. Because, 
a century or two ago, one clown tried to eat tea 
leaves with butter, and pronounced tea an abom- 
ination, are we to be told that tea is not an agree- 
able beverage? or because another clown tried 
to eat potato-plums, and kicked the whole plant 
out of his ground as a nuisance, are we to he 
told that the potato is an odious weed and no 
article of food? Certainly not; and yet the blun- 
ders of the clowns are just as good arguments 
against the right use of tea and potatoes, as the 
blunders of erring gardeners against the principles 
and practices of acclimatation. 
Cultivation brings old and well known plants 
to perfection ; it introduces new species from 
foreign countries to our gardens, from hothouses 
to the open border, and from gardens to the fields ; 
it multiplies varieties, develops hidden proper- 
ties, and expands a small genus ora single species 
into a great and diversified family ; it enlarges 
valuable organs, diminishes annoying organs, and 
evokes sweetness from acidity, and beauty from | 
deformity ; it works corollz into leaves, leaves 
into corolle, branches into roots, and roots into 
branches ; it draws the most luscious fruits from 
the juices of acrid stems, and evolves the most 
fragrant flowers from the sap of naturally odour- 
less plants ; it accelerates fructification in a 
biennial so as to convert it permanently into an 
annual, and retards fructification in an annual 
so as to convert it permanently into a biennial ; 
it has transmuted a trivial annual grass which 
matured its seeds in about six months, into the 
richest of the farinaceous grains, which slowly 
and sturdily elaborates its progress to maturity 
during the long period of twelve or thirteen 
months ; it has worked the sour and worthless 
crab into the numberless and luscious existing 
varieties of the apple ; it has lifted the naturally 
poisonous peach from its original habitat in 
Media, and worked it into one of the most whole- 
some and delicious of fruits upon the plains of 
Egypt and Ispahan; it has transmuted one paltry 
and miserable weed—the Brassica oleracea—into 
all the existing varieties of white cabbages, red 
cabbages, borecoles, savoys, Brussels’ sprouts, 
broccolis, and cauliflowers ; it has naturalized, 
in our fields, in our orchards, and in our open 
gardens, many hundreds of the most valuable 
plants of more than one-half of all the countries 
of the world ; and, wonderful, innumerable, and 
of incalculable worth as are its undoubted achieve- 
ments, it has wholly accomplished not a few, and 
partially accomplished a very large proportion, 
by some one or more of the processes of acclima- 
tation. 
The celebrated botanist, De Candolle, indeed, 
seems fully to doubt whether any degree of ac- 
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