| "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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