PROPAGATION OF PLANTS. 67 



PROPAGATION OF PLANTS 



BY 



CUTTINGS, LAYERS, DIVISION, AND SEED. 



PROBABLY there is no horticultural operation so inter- 

 esting as that of Propagation. Although I have been at 

 the business now for nearly forty-five years, still there is 

 no part of the work that to me compels such unflagging 

 interest as that of calling into separate existence a dozen, 

 a hundred, or a thousand slips from one plant, or of watch- 

 ing the varied forms of tiny seedling plants when called 

 into separate individual life by the methods used for that 

 purpose. No matter how well able the lover of plants may 

 be to buy them in their full development, they never have 

 the charm that the bantlings of his own raising give. 

 This is particularly the case with amateur florists, who 

 have but a few plants, and who have time enough and 

 interest enough to pet and care for each particular plant. 



The following instructions in the art of propagation, I 

 trust, will be so plain and simple that the most inexperi- 

 enced amateur, as well as the young florist, will be able to 

 understand and follow them. The instructions will con- 

 tain all our most recent experience; and though some of 

 them will be nearly identical with what I have before 

 written on this subject in the Hand-book of Plants, yet 

 there is such additional information (particularly on Rose 

 Propagation) as will be interesting and instructive, I 

 trust, even to such as have already read what I have 

 before written. 



