Raising Trees from Leaves. 



The first who made this art known was Agostino jNIandirola, 

 Doctor of Theology, an Italian minorite of the rranciscau order. In a 

 small work upon gardening, printed for the first time at Yicenza, in 

 dnodecimo, in the year 1652, and "which was reprinted afterwards in 

 various places, he gave an account of his having produced trees 

 from the leaves of the cedar and lemon, but he does not relate this 

 circumstance as if he considered it to be a great discovery ; on the 

 contrary, he appears rather to think it a matter of very little 

 importance. His book was soon translated into German, and his 

 account copied by other writers, such as Bockler and Hohberg, who 

 ■were at that time much rend. A gardener of Augsburg, as we are 

 told by Agricola, M'as the first who imitated this experiment, and 

 X3roved the possibility of it to others. He is said to have tried it 

 Avith good success in the garden of Count de Wratislau, Ambassador 

 at Eatisbon from the Elector of Bohemia. But never was this 

 experiment so often and so successfully repeated as in the garden of 

 Baron de Munchausen, at Swobbler. A young tree was obtained 

 tliere from a leaf of the Limona riro, which produced fruit the 

 second year. It was sent to Mr. Volkamer at Nuremberg, who caused 

 a drawing to l)e made from it, which was afterwards engraved, in 

 order that it might be published In the third volume of his Hesperi- 

 des ; but as the author died shortly afterwards it was not printed. Tlie 

 exact drawing as it was then executed at Nuremberg, and an account 

 of the wliole process employed in the experiment at Swobbler, were 

 published by the Baron de JNIunchausen himself, from authentic papers 

 in liis grandfather's own handwriting. No one, however, attracted so 

 much attention to this circumstance as the well-known George 

 Andrew Agricola, physician at Eatisbon, who, with that confidence 

 and prolixity which were peculiar to him, ventured to assert tliat 

 trees could be propagated in the speediest manner by planting the 

 leaves, after being steeped in a liquor he had invented ; and for the 

 truth of the assertion he referred to his own experience. Among the 

 naturalists of that x^eriod, none took more trouble to examine tlie 

 possibility of this effect than Thunning, who endeavoured to prove 

 that not only leaves with eyes left in them, could in well-moistened 

 earth throw out roots which would produce a stem, but that leaves 

 also without eyes would grow up to be trees. Baron Munchausen, on 

 the other hand, assures us that, according to the many experiments 

 made in his garden, one can only expect young plants from the leaves 

 of those trees wliich do not bring fortlibuds ; that experiments made 



