SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 309 



own purposes. Good examples were always catching, and he illustrated 

 in various ways how communities had been rendered industrious by the 

 introduction of articles for the cultivation of taste and luxury in their 

 neighborhood. Jle said that at present Western nurserymen take but little 

 interest outside of fruit trees, but Avith the increase of wealth and refinement 

 in the general community they will find that as assistants in this direction they 

 have much to learn. Even the cultivation of a few flowers assists in this 

 direction, and yet, as a general thing, nurserymen and horticultural societies 

 acted as if flower culture was but a trifiing occupation, fit only for women and 

 children ; but it was soon found that from flower culture the taste for high 

 branches of gardening followed, until it had at last culminated in fine public 

 gardens and private grounds, in which the most expensive, most valuable 

 results of the landscape gardener found a home. Even what we might con- 

 sider triiimg in a love for flowers or beauty generally — call it even finery if you 

 will — has a beneficial influence on a community in various wavs. The woman 

 who sees her neighbor with pretty things or fine surroundings is bound to have 

 the same as her neighbor, and the industry of the male portion of a family is 

 bound to be stimulated by the wants of the gentler sex. Thus it follows that 

 the nurseryman, in encouraging in the fairer sex a taste for flowers, is not 

 only cultivating habits which will give pleasure to thousands, but which will 

 react favorably in the end as a matter of business. Not only by specimens of 

 taste and skill on his own grounds, but also by the encouragement of horti- 

 cultural exhibitions will his best interests be served ; not merely exhibiting 

 what may be simply new, but also specimens of his highest skill, thereby 

 creating a standard of beauty which those who see will aim to equal. In 

 conclusion, in summing up his own remarks, he said he wished it to be under- 

 stood that the amount of money involved in the nursery business was much 

 greater than those actually engaged in it had any idea of. That it was well 

 worthy of a study of those business rules especially adapted to it. That it was 

 a business that gave pleasure to thousands and pain to none, and that that part 

 of it which dealt with the beautiful, rather than that which was merely useful, 

 would most assuredly grow in popular estimation, and that it was in this 

 directien that those who were looking to the future prospects of the business 

 should carefully attend. 



PROPAGATION OF CUTTINGS. 



I am very fond of experimenting in connection with the propagation of 

 plants, and this autumn I tried a new method which worked admirably, and 

 which I will describe to you, thinking, perhaps, it may be of some service, I 

 have flower beds during the summer, and although mostly made up of annuals, 

 I plant out one border of houseplants, geraniums, heliotrope, etc. The plants 

 I bed out are pretty well used up with blooming the entire summer, and are 

 stalky and bare, so unfitted for repotting and placing in the house. To have 

 new, fresh plants for the window and stocky ones to plant out again in the 

 spring, I took cuttings the last of August and managed as follows : 



A square box was found, four feet on a side and six inches deep ; holes were 

 bored in the bottom and a layer of pounded brick placed in the bottom for 

 drainage. I found some coarse sand that was dug out of a well and filled in 

 the box until within two inches of the top. In this sand I placed cuttings of 



