Cultivated Plants: their Propagation and Improvement. By F. W. 

 BuEBiDGE. Edinburgh : Blackwood and Sons. 



This eminently practical and suggestive work will supply a want that 

 has been much felt by all cultivators of plants in acquiring a correct know- 

 ledge of the best means of propagating them, so as to enable them, with 

 some certainty of success, to increase their stock to any necessary extent, 

 more especially of the newer and rarer sorts. Of such useful information, 

 and practical suggestions for the improvement of plants, this work is 

 brimful ; and we feel confident, in recommending it to the favourable 

 notice of our practical readers, that they will acquire a vast amount of 

 useful knowledge and interesting information by a perusal of it. The 

 propagation of useful and ornamental trees and shrubs, especially of rare 

 and curious species and improved varieties, is a subject to which foresters 

 have devoted comparatively little attention, and we consider it to be as 

 important and necessary a branch of their practical or technical education 

 as the knowledge to a gardener or nurseryman of how to strike cuttings, 

 bud, or graft. 



No forester can be called thoroughly qualified to fulfil all the duties of 

 his profession who has not a practical knowledge of the methods best 

 adapted to increase the plants under his care, and we trust yet to see some 

 efficient means taken by those who have the power to properly educate our 

 young foresters in this very important part of their profession, as well as in 

 all other technical matters relating thereto. 



In reference to the raising or propagating of Conifene, the most impor- 

 tant family of plants cultivated by foresters, excellent advice is given upon 

 the selection of seeds from trees in the full vigour of their life, which has 

 been found by carefully worked out experiments to be between the ages of 

 50 and 125 years, during which the rate of fertility of the seeds produced 

 is by far higher than at any earlier or later period in the life of a conifer. 

 As a rule, seeds collected from healthy, vigorous trees produce an equally 

 healthy and robust progeny. 



The author then proceeds to say, " The latter end of March, if mild, or 

 the beginning of April, is the best time to sow all Conifer seeds ; and it is 

 an excellent plan to place the seeds in a bag, and to soak them in water 

 for a day or two, taking care to dry the seeds in the sun before sowing. 



