302 THE FLOEAL WOULD AND GAEDEN GUIDE. 



may be bad in larger masses, forming more striking objects, where it 

 can be planted out in the border of tbe stove and trained to tbe 

 rafters, wbere it will bloom profusely for months in succession. It 

 is, however, well known to be one of tbe very best of stove climbers. 



STPJKING CUTTINGS. 



[HAT is required wben cuttingaof plants are to be struck, 

 is a due adjustment of beat, light, and moisture. The 

 first stimulates the vital process ; tbe second causes the 

 formation of matter out of which roots and leaves are to 

 be organized ; the third is at once a vehicle for the 

 food required by tbe cutting, and a part of it. The great difficulty 

 is to know how to adjust these agents. If the heat is too high, 

 organs are formed faster than they can be solidified. If too low, 

 decay comes on before the reproductive forces can be put in action. 

 When light is too powerful, the fluid contents of the cutting are 

 lost faster than they can be supplied ; wben too feeble, there is not 

 a sufficiently quick formation of organizable matter to construct the 

 new roots and leaves with. If water is deficient, the cutting is 

 starved; if over-abundant, it rots. It is, then, the adjustment of 

 these varying forces to tbe peculiar nature of the cutting to be 

 acted upon, that constitutes the art of propagation. It is this 

 which theory cannot supply, but which depends upon skill and 

 experience. If any part of the operations of cultivation can be 

 called empirical, it is this. And yet the operator is not without 

 rules to guide him in this adjustment. The misfortune is, that 

 they are too general. 



The softer a cutting, the quicker must be the excitement and 

 application of the formative process ; the more light, the greater the 

 quantity of water. The more hard and wood}' a cutting, tbe slower 

 will be the operation, the more feeble the light, the greater the 

 quantity of water. If these conditions of new growth can but be 

 preserved, all cuttings of all plants maybe converted into new indi- 

 viduals. Tbe great enemies of the propagator, says Mr. Neumann, 

 are rotting and drying. For this reason cuttings are preserved in 

 the midst of a temperature and humidity always equal, the evapora- 

 tion of the soil is hindered, aud the perspiration of the cuttings is 

 prevented. Heat, light, and moisture being thus shown to be the 

 agents to whose assistance we must look for success, and by whose 

 mismanagement the hopes of the gardener are ruined, it is of the first 

 importance to determine how each can be best and most efficiently 

 controlled. 



And first of heat. We know that plants are distributed over 

 all parts of the habitable globe : that in neighbouring countries the 

 species are nearly alike ; that distant countries are clothed with 

 vegetation of entirely different kinds ; and that the distinction in 

 the vegetation is in proportion to the distance of the countries from 

 each other. There is not, perhaps, a dozen speeies in Normandy 



