| "The Japanese, Their Proficiency in Mechanics, Agricultural Science, &c." (1860) includes these lines:
The advent of the Japanese Embassy, and the
interest in this but partially known people, which the event has awakened in
the minds of our citizens, has induced us to give some account of their
acquirements in the agricultural and mechanical departments…
...The gardeners of Japan have attained to the art of dwarfing, and also of
unnaturally enlarging all
vegetable productions. In the gardens of their towns they exhibit full grown trees of various
kinds, only three feet in hight, with heads of about the same diameter. As long ago as
1826, a box was shown to the president of a Dutch factory at Nagasaki, 4 inches long, l-1/2 wide, and 6 inches in
depth, in which were grown a
bamboo, a fir, and a plum tree, the latter full blossom. They sometimes stimulate
the growth of their trees
to such an extent that the branches stretch to a great distance from the trunk, and are supported
by props. 1
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