PROPAGATION. 247 



the bottoms of these cuttings be taken off close under a joint 

 or leaf, and with a sharp knife take off the leaves full half an 

 inch high ; these cuttings should be sorted, so that each pot 

 may be filled with but one family of plants, and, when you 

 have enough, only one variety. 



Next take a bell-glass that goes well inside the rim, and 

 make a mark with it in the sand ; then, the sand being satu- 

 rated with water, you may take the cuttings one by one and 

 press into the sand to the bottom of it, so as just to press but 

 not to enter the compost beneath it. ^^Tien you have put 

 all in that you intend, let the surface of the sand be watered 

 with a fine rose, to settle it well about the stems, and cover 

 with the glass, which must be gently pressed into the sand, so 

 that it shuts out the external air. If the pot be now plunged 

 into a tan-bed, or any other medium that yields a moderate 

 bottom heat, and the whole be shaded from the sun, and if 

 the glasses are removed in the morning, and the inside of the 

 glass dried, many kinds of cuttings will be rooted in a few 

 days. But water must be administered freely, and the glasses 

 must not be kept off long together for the first few days, and 

 the general warmth of the bed must not be allowed to decline. 

 If any of the cuttings should damp off from any oversight 

 in the preparation, let such as damp off or fail be at once 

 removed, that the infection may not reach the others. 



In this way some of the most delicate and difficult things 

 to propagate by cuttings may be rooted with a tolerable degree 

 of certainty; but if we were propagating camellias in large 

 quantities, we should not cover them with glasses, but put the 

 pots with the cuttings, as thick as we could stick them in, 

 under the glass of a common hot- bed, and take especial care 

 that the soil in the pots did not get too dry. Very few of them 

 would miss if they were cut properly, and as they began to 

 grow we should give more air, until we could remove them to 

 a cold frame, and soon after pot them off in small pots, one 

 plant in each. The more hardy the plant, the less bottom 

 heat should there be ; but it is certain that by keeping the 

 roots warmer than the tops, the growth there is encouraged. 

 Geraniums and many other plants -^-ill strike in a common 

 border under a hand-glass, but the plan we have mentioned 

 will generally succeed with the most dehcate and the most 

 obstmate of hard-wooded exotics, as well as with the ordinary 

 free-growing plants. Eapid growmg climbers of the perennial 



