244 PEACTICAL GARDENIlSi,. 



are choice of their few plants, and contrive, by attention to 

 the main points of watering and shiftiQg, to grow them 

 healthy for many years, but whose collections are, of course, 

 limited. 'No lady would be without her mjT-tle, and slips of 

 this will root anywhere and anyhow. Then there are the 

 old-fashioned geraniums — the oak-leaf, the peppermint, the 

 horse-shoe, the ivy-leaf, and others prized for the scent of 

 their foliage, — which strike instantly from slips ; and, of 

 course, anything that would root easily so, would be a very 

 short time rooting from prepared cuttiags. The old Acacia 

 armata, another cottage favourite, and the fuchsia, when there 

 were but two or three known, — and that a fuchsia was a 

 fuchsia was all that any moderate amateur comprehended, — 

 was quite a star. Messembryanthemums, and two or three 

 other succulents, formed a portion of the better and more 

 extensive collections ; but all these readily struck root, if a 

 shoot was taken near the bottom, and this was the extent of 

 the general knowledge on the subject of propagation. Such 

 people never dreamed of the wholesale propagation that is 

 goLQg on at nurseries, nor did they think of using a knife to 

 prepare the base of a cutting. If there were branches broken 

 by the wind, they were stuck in a pot, and as the fracture was 

 generally where the branch joined the old wood, it rooted 

 much oftener than it failed ; but all this, simple as it seemed, 

 gave very little notion of cuttings. The most easily-rooted 

 subjects are greatly hastened by applying proper means ; and 

 although many of them will strike in a common border, if 

 properly prepared, they would root much sooner if covered 

 with a hand-glass, and still more readily if hastened by a 

 httle bottom heat. One of the first objects is to get proper 

 cuttings — that is to say, cuttings of wood, as it is called, in a 

 proper state. Some things strike best with the wood in 

 a young growing state ; others require that the wood should 

 have done its growth for the season, and become nearly ripe ; 

 some strike from the hard wood only; some will only root in 

 sand, others in wet moss ; but there are certain rules which 

 apply to all, and, if not absolutely a necessary condition, tend 

 to hasten the rooting of the most free strikers. Every morsel 

 of some plants seems to bear the rudiments of roots : the 

 gloxinia ^ill strike and form plants from leaves only; the 

 chppings of carnation leaves will often strike root as they lie 

 on the surface of the soil, although we never knew one to 



