ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 187, 15 May 1847, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator. Sir, — If you think the following worthy a place in your valuable Journal, it will be adding one amongst many others of the extraordinary powers of vegetation which our climate is so much renowned for producing, more particularly as in the present instance the soil has had nothing to boast of; but on the contrary, two years since there was nothing but fern of a stunted description, and with a subsoil about six inches below the surface, consisting of a very tenacious sort of white pipe-clay. In the spring of 1845, a sucker taken f torn the root of a cherrytree in Colonel Wakefield's garden was planted in this soil, and on the 28th August, 1846, it was grafted by my own hands, with a scion from a white-heart taken out of the same gentleman's garden. At this time the original sock and scion were almost exactly of the same thickness, say that of a large quill, and the rresent measurement, which was made on the first of May, 1847, eight months after it was ingrafted, giving it two sprinsr, three summer, and three autumnal months. The scion with which it was ingrafted was cut six inches in length, with three germinal buds near its top end, from which germs sprung three shoots ; the two largest were allowed to rise to the length of four feet, and the third to that of three feet six inches. On the sth of January, 1847, to prevent them being broken down by the wind, and to produce a better proportion of thickness, the two longest shoots had one foot six inches cut from the topof each, and the smallest had one foot put from its trp, leaving the three two feet six inches in length each; from one of the largest stems sprung out eight new shoots, measuring at an average two feet six inches in length, from the second large stem spuing out seven new shoots, now averaging two teet six inches and a half, and from the third or smallest stem sprung five shoots averaging two feet in length; spread of the whole top over all measuring four feet ; thickness of original stock and scion still nearly the same, measuring now four and a quarter inches in girth ; the two largest shoots now measuring itt girth three inches each, and the smallest two and a quarter, the girth being taken one inch from the lower average of each. I am, Sir, > our obedient servant, F. Logan, Surgeon, R.N. Te >.ro Flat, Wellington, May 12, 1847.