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climatation has ever taken place, or can be 
proved possible ; and he even defines naturaliza- 
tion to be little, if any thing, more than the 
transporting of a plant into a different country 
from that in which it originally grew. But Keith 
justly asks, in reference to such naturalization, 
whether a mere journey overland or voyage upon 
the ocean can make a plant agree with new con- 
ditions of existence? and, in reference to the 
supposed doubtfulness of acclimatation,— with 
the fact before our eyes, that plants from warmer, 
climates, as Aucuba Japonica, and Peonia moutan, 
do ultimately become accustomed to colder cli- 
mates, by occupying first the hothouse, and then 
the greenhouse, preparatory to their being ex- 
posed to the open air, how can we refuse to ad- 
mit the possibility of acclimatation ?” Nor might 
he have pointed only to the two remarkable and 
well-known instances of unquestionable acclima- 
' tation which he specifies, but, more or less, to 
the greater portion of the finest ornaments of 
| our gardens, the greater part of the most delicious 
| produce of our orchards, and even a considerable 
portion of the most common and valuable pro- 
ductions of our fields. No enlightened farmer is 
speculative enough to agree with De Candolle, or 
stupid enough to regard the topic of acclimata- 
tion as ideal or uninteresting ; for every farmer 
of moderate information knows that a large pro- 
portion of crops now grown on cold or upland 
soils owe their ripening powers to acquired or 
acclimatated earliness in particular varieties of 
‘grain,—that a series or succession of maturity 
among varieties of potatoes, turnips, and other 
green crops available for the purposes of alternate 
husbandry or the soiling of cattle, has, in a great 
degree, resulted from acclimatation,—that, in a 
word, a very large proportion of the whole’ pro- 
duce of a farm has, in modern times, been so mo- 
dified by the acclimatation of its plants, as to be 
far better adapted than before to the exigencies 
and the critical conditions of our seasons. Yet 
all such facts known to farmers are as nothing 
compared to the crowds of corresponding facts 
known to gardeners. 
The Siberian crab, in its native ‘country, ex- 
| perienced a sudden and invariable transition from 
a rigid winter to a warm and sunny winter ; and, 
in consequence, it burst, year by year, suddenly 
and gorgeously into the full blush of its beauty, 
and continued to display its energy till the end 
of the summer. When first introduced to Bri- 
tain, it knew nothing of our alternations of frost 
and thaw, and still less of our period of sharp 
spring frosts which may be designated our second 
winter ; and it burst into foliage at the earliest 
retreat of our first frosts, exhibited in February 
all the beauties of May, sustained violent shocks 
from the frosts of spring, and drooped and died 
of exhaustion just at the moment when other 
trees were awaking from sleep and shaking into 
action their yearly energies. But now this fine 
| ornament of our shrubberies has acquired a know- 
ACCLIMATATION OF PLANTS. 
ledge of our climate, and accommodated its habits 
to our seasons ; it does not so hastily as before 
put confidence in our treacherous spring, but ex- 
foliates itself with due slowness and caution, and 
so escapes destruction, and flourishes as steadily 
us in its native country.—The laurel, when first 
introduced to England about two centuries ago, 
required to be protected from frost by so warm a 
covering as a blanket; and yet is now a hardy 
and an universally diffused evergreen. 
laurels raised from cuttings grown in this country, 
are well known to be hardier and healthier than 
plants raised from foreign seed—The Aucuba 
Japonica, so like the laurel in some respects, and 
so often to be seen growing along with it in the 
open shrubbery, was, as already hinted, origi- 
nally a hothouse plant in Great Britain,—not in 
consequence of a blunder, but, if not from down- 
right necessity, at least. from ordinary prudence. | 
‘“‘ In the year 1791,” says Sir Joseph Banks, in 
the Transactions of the London Horticultural 
Society, “some of the seeds of the Zizania aquatica | 
(Canadian rice) were procured from Canada, and 
sown in a pond at Spring-Grove, near Hounslow ; 
they grew and produced strong plants which 
ripened their seeds. These seeds vegetated in 
the succeeding spring ; but the plants they pro- 
duced were weak, slender, not half so tall as those 
of the first generation, and grew in the shallowest 
water only ; the seeds of these plants produced | 
others the next year, sensibly stronger than their 
parents of the second year. In this manner the 
plants proceeded, springing up every year from 
the seeds of the preceding one, every year be- 
coming visibly stronger and larger, and rising 
from deeper parts of the pond, till the last year, 
1804, when several of the plants were six feet in | 
height, and the whole pond was in every part | 
covered with them as thick as wheat grows on a | 
well-managed soil. Here we have an experiment 
which proves that an annual plant, scarce able 
to endure the ungenial summer of England, has 
become, in fourteen generations, as strong and as | 
vigorous as our indigenous plants, and as perfect, | 
in all its parts, as in its native climate.” But 
the z¢zanta—which abounds in all the shallow 
streams of North America, feeds immense flocks 
of wild swans and other water-fowl—contributes 
largely to the support of the wandering tribes of 
Indians, and seems destined, in the opinion of 
Pinkerton, to become the bread-corn of the North, 
—this grain has now become acclimatated, not 
only in Middlesex, but in Ross-shire, producing 
bland farinaceous seeds, which afford a very good 
meal. The conclusion drawn by Sir Joseph Banks 
and by Dr. MacCulloch from these facts is, that 
while those plants not belonging to our own cli- 
mate, which have been propagated by cuttings, 
retained the tenderness or delicacy of the original 
parents, when produced from seeds they became 
comparatively hardy, and may, in a certain num- 
ber of successive generations, become perhaps as 
hardy as any of our native vegetables. 
Plants of | 
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