INTRODUCTION. 
easy and ready way of increasing our stocks. These should be 
taken in July or August, and struck in the sand bed, bottom heat 
being here of special use in making them root quickly and grow 
sturdily. Division, on the other hand, though possible in any 
open weather at any time of year, is usually undertaken in spring 
or the end of summer. With very precious varieties these are 
the only methods of securing really trustworthy reproductions 
of the original. In the case of rare shrubs and woody plants,. 
grafting is often the best or only means of multiplication ; but 
this is work for a specialist, and is best left to such. 
The raising of seeds, however, is the most copious way of 
adding to our stock, to say nothing of the fact that a home-raised 
seedling is, vpso facto, bound to have a longer life in front of it 
than a mature collected clump, besides having the adventurous 
constitution of youth untarnished by maturity or the shock of 
separation from its native hills. At the same time a young 
seedling, with its long thread-like fibre, is by no means so easy 
to insert into a crevice as is a healthy cutting with the new roots 
just pushing, and about half an inch in length, or even less. The 
seedling, however, if successfully ensconced, is quicker in growth 
than the cutting, though I cannot conceal my own preference for 
dealing with the latter. Alpine seed, as a tule, is either very 
prompt and profuse in coming up, as in all Columbines, Pinks, 
and Poppies, or else partial, spasmodic, slow, or difficult, as often 
in Primulas, Gentians, and mountain Pansies. A most vital 
point is to obtain quite fresh mature seeds and to sow them 
as soon as possible. Spring sowing, indeed, is the general horti- 
cultural fashion, and has this much to say for it, that seed sown 
between January and March can germinate at once, under the 
immediate impulsion of the spring, without lying dormant through 
the deadness of the year in the unpropitious conditions that, 
in spite of all our care, replace in gardens the generative bed 
of snow beneath which they impatiently await, in perfect tran- 
quillity, the release of the mountains in spring. It must not, how- 
ever, be forgotten that the seed is already a living plant, but with 
only itself to subsist on until sown; therefore, if kept out of the 
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