44 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



Cuttings taken from either class of such plants will perpetuate, 

 for a time, these features of their parents, being comparatively 

 barren or tentatively fruitful of flowers. 



Propagating by cuttings is not an unnatural process for con- 

 tinuing species. Nature adopts it in the segmentary process of 

 many plants, and by the agamic process in the lower orders of 

 the zoophyte kingdom. The greenfly largely perpetuates itself by 

 nodules that develope themselves on the inside of the walls of 

 their abdomen, from which they separate, and are born living 

 insects. 



TEMPERATURE. 



The temperature employed in striking cuttings is a matter on 

 which growers do not fully agree, but it can be largely settled by 

 the laws of vegetable physiology. It is presumption for any 

 one man to say this is the proper temperature, or that is the 

 better cutting, if it is not along the lines of plant life. The 

 temperature for the cutting bench should, for a few days, be no 

 higher than that in which the plants were kept, from which the 

 cuttings were taken. 



The heat used for rooting varies with different propagators. 

 Some use no bottom heat, maintaining merely the common green- 

 house temperature of 65 to 70 degrees; others use bottom heat, the 

 sand being 10 degrees above the house heat. The ideal tempera- 

 ture for rooting cuttings is 60 degrees for the sand and 40 degrees 

 for the house. 



