206 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



tally come from seed, and -which, on account of its beauty and 

 other good qualities, has been largely propagated. 



"The tree is increased by cuttings. It grows rapidly, and in 

 twenty five or thirty years it attains the height of thirty metres 

 •with a diameter of one metre*. It is said to live a century, but 

 this is doubtful, as its wood after twenty-five or thirty years rapidly 

 •decays and becomes useless.f 



This classical tree was thus referred to by Ovid in the fourth 

 book of his epistles fromPontus: 



" Vos quoque felices, quarum clamantia fratrem 

 Cortice velavit Populus ora novo." 



The fable of Ovid made the ambitious youth Phaston sick to 

 drive the fiery steeds of Phoebus; he found them unmanageable; 

 they ran away, came too near the earth, set northern Africa on fire, 

 producing the desert of Sahara, and curdled or dried up the blood 

 of the negroes. Jupiter struck Phaeton with two of his bolts, 

 which destroyed him, and his remains fell into the river Po, whence 

 the water nymphs rescued them, and he was decently interred on 

 the banks. There his sisters lamented him unconsolably untilJove 

 pityingly transformed them, as set forth by the poet, into poplar 

 trees; and there have they ever since continued to grow and 

 flourish. 



This history is not without instruction in the consideration of 

 some of the questions of vegetable physiology, that often present 

 themselves at our horticultural meetings, and still more frequently 

 to the thoughtful ones when engaged in their practical labors among 

 plants, and will help to dispel the dogmatic dicta which are so 

 often cited, and have even been accepted as truths: such as the 

 running out of varieties, and that plants cannot be indefinitely 

 produced from sections, or cuttings, grafting, etc., as though these 

 processes were inimical to the species or variety. Now here is a 

 seedling (in habit a sport), from the normal form as we now believe 

 (though described and long considered a species), which has been 

 grown by cuttings for twelve centuries, at least since immortalized 

 by the ancient poet in the eighth century. 



* A metre equals thirty-nine and a fraction inches. 



f Manuale-Teorico-Practico D'Arte Forestale, p 136, di Giovanni Carlo 

 Siemoni, Inspector General of the Forests of Italy. 



