CUTTINGS. 
177 
_—_ So 
CUTTINGS. 
Esa a ee 
one rotten cutting, if not taken | tuses, Euphorbias, Mesembryan- 
away unmediately, will infect the | themums, Crassulas, and the like, 
whole pot, and they will all damp 
off in a very little time. Ifa potful 
of each sort should be more than 
is required, care must be taken to 
sort the cuttings out in such a way 
that the smocth kinds may be 
placed together, and the hairy ones, 
the viscid ones, &c., by themselves. 
This separation is the more neces- 
sary, as the hairy kinds generally 
collect more moisture than the 
smooth sorts; besides the great 
difference of time required to strike 
them, some of the smooth or gla- 
brous sorts striking in a month, 
while some of the viscid ones re- 
quire three or four months. When 
the cuttings are put in in December, 
the greater part of them will be 
struck by February or March, 
when they should be carefully pot- 
ted into thumb-pots, about half 
full of very fine potsherds, and the 
other half filled up with soil com- 
posed of equal parts of finely-sifted 
peat and silver sand. The plants 
will now only require to be kept 
under the hand-glass for a few days, 
to let them root again; and then 
they must remain for about a fort- 
night or three weeks on the green- 
house shelf, after which they may be 
with safety removed to the cold 
frame. 
Cuttings of stove-plants generally 
require to be planted in the same 
kind of soil as the parent plant, and 
plunged in a gentle bottom heat, 
from a hotbed of tan or stable 
manure, under a bell-glass ; though 
some ef the more slender-growing 
kinds require silver sand, without 
bottom heat. As cuttings of many 
stove-plants are very large, care 
must be taken never to allow them 
to flag or droop, and also to preserve 
as many of their leaves as possible ; 
indeed, this rule may be applied to 
almost all cuttings. 
Succulent plants, such as Cac- 
require to be kept out of the ground 
for a few days to dry, after they have 
been cut off; and then to be planted 
in a mixture of peat, sand, and brick 
rubbish, well drained. The pots 
may afterwards be set on the dry 
shelf of a warm greenhouse, and 
only occasionally and slightly wa- 
tered ; many of them, indeed, will 
require no water till they have 
struck. 
Many plants, the shoots of which 
will not root readily, are easily in- 
creased by cuttings of the roots ; 
such as some of the Acacias, Roses, 
&c. Roots not less than a quarter 
of an inch in diameter should be 
chosen, and planted in the same 
kind of soil in which they have pre- 
viously been growing, with their tops 
just above ‘the surface of the soil, 
and plunged in a gentle bottom heat, 
when they will, in a few weeks, form 
a bud, and send ap a shoot, and thus 
become well established plants in a 
shorter time than by almost any 
other method. Many hardy plants 
are raised from cuttings of the roots, 
and these only require to be put into 
light rich soil near a wall, or in any 
other sheltered situation, and to 
be kept rather moist, and shaded 
occasionally. 
A very curious experiment was_ 
tried in 1839 by M. Neuman of the 
Jardin des Plantes. Finding t 
Theophrasta latifolia (Clavija or- 
nata. Don), would grow readily 
from a cutting formed of a leaf, he 
conceived the idea of cutting a leaf 
in two, and trying to strike both 
parts. He did so, plunging the 
plants in the pit of a hothouse, and 
succeeded in striking both ; but he 
found that though the lower half of 
the leaf made roots in three months 
(see fig. 13), the upper half (fig. 
14) was nearly double that time be- 
fore it was quite,established. The 
dotted lines in jig. 14 show where 
