1124. To increase the number and retain the native qualities of vegetables, it is necessary to imitate, as exactly as circumstances will admit, their native habitation, in respect to soil, climate, mode of watering, light, &c. If the habitation is in any way ameliorated, the qualities of the plant will be altered, and its parts enlarged, which is not desired. All that is neccssary, therefore, for effecting this branch of culture, is to imitate the habitation, and to propagate. This is, or ought to be, the case, wherever plants are grown for medical or botanical purposes, as in herb and botanic gardens. Nature is here imitated as exactly as possible; arid the result is, productions resembling, as nearly as possible, those of nature.
