SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 531 



*' borers" must be kept out in either case, and "yellows" is as likely to 

 -attack the one as the other. 



Home Nurseries. — A correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune speaks our 

 views precisely regarding the encouragement of home nurseries. He says: 



Encourage the home nursery and gains will come in from many direc- 

 tions. The nurseryman will be induced to try all promising new fruits in 

 your own air and soil at no cost to you, but to your great profit when you 

 come to choose and plant. He will grow for sale only the sorts that suc- 

 ceed well in his region. Then you can see and select the trees and plants 

 yourself and get them home without exposure and fatal drying of the 

 roots; and you can have the prime advantage of planting early in the sea- 

 son so that new rootlets will be ready to issue before any buds open to make 

 draft upon the roots. 



And besides all this you pay no extravagant price, and no agent's per- 

 centage, and you have recourse if you find any mistake made as to sorts or 

 sizes. Never trust such an important matter as the choice of trees which 

 will be yours for life to wandering, unknown and irresponsible peddlers, or 

 even to fixed local agents who do not themselves grow them ; if you can, 

 deal directly with a respetable nurseryman — and all nurserymen are respect- 

 able — something in the nature of their business, or in their tendency to se- 

 lect it, gives assurance of sound moral worth. 



A nurseryman sometimes substitutes another variety for the one ordered 

 by mail. But how is he to know whether he will not be blamed if he fail to 

 fill the order with a tree as nearly as possible like the sort named, and do so 

 before the season passes and it is too late to plant any tree? The majority 

 fail to order until there is no time left for inquiry. It is easy to state with 

 the order whether that variety and no other is wanted. Some retailers do 

 what is much worse than the substitution complained of. If, say, Blush 

 apple is wanted, and there is no tree of Blush left, a Blush label is tied on 

 .some other sort, and that is sent to satisfy the requirement. 



From Cuttings. — A correspondent of the New York Tribune tells how 

 to get trees and shrubs from cuttings: 



Although a very common resource with nurserymen, it is not generally 

 known how readily many species of trees and shrubs root from sections of 

 the previous season's growth. If made up into lengths of about six inches 

 at this time of the year and packed in boxes of moist sand or moss in a cool 

 cellar many kinds will have emitted roots by planting time next spring. A 

 still better time for preserving them is to heel-in the cuttings (tied in small 

 bundles) in the open ground and protect with some light material as a mulch. 



Some trees and shrubs form roots at any point along the shoot : others, 

 more difficult of propagation, appear to prefer a point directly below a bed 

 — the node of botany ; whenever wood is reasonably plentiful it is well to 

 adopt the latter with all cuttings. Among trees, poplars and willows root 

 most readily, although little difficulty is experienced with mulberries, syca- 

 mores, or buttonwoods, etc. In the almost endless list of shrubs are only a 

 very few that refuse to be increased by this method, and even these, it not 

 unfrequently happens, may be propagated by root-cuttings. 



