PROPAGATION BY CUTTINGS. 49 



they pushed forth fresh leaves. One I gave away ; the other I 

 planted against a south wall, and it is now 3 feet high and in 

 bloom." 



A cutting may be defined as any portion of a plant, root, 

 stem, bud, or leaf which is separated from the parent and in- 

 duced to form roots of its own. " Eyes " are cuttings consist- 

 ing of one bud only, just as " buds " are in reality single-budded 

 scions or grafts. There is considerable resemblance and 

 analogy between a bud or " eye " and bulbs and seeds, and 

 all may alike be utilised for reproductive purposes by being 

 placed in suitable conditions of heat and moisture ; and the 

 same cellular tissue or callus which precedes the formation 

 of roots, and which is indeed part of the root-producing growth 

 of the eye or cutting, when planted in soil, also insures the 

 junction of the graft or scion and the transplanted " eye " or 

 bud in the operation of grafting and budding. " The import- 

 ance of buds in the propagation of plants, although well 

 known to botanists, has hitherto been comparatively little 

 attended to by propagators in general. Their universality is 

 much greater than is usually thought ; for, as has been stated 

 by Professor Balfour, in ' Class Book of Botany,' the higher 

 classes of plants may be considered as consisting of numerous 

 buds united on a common axis. These possess a certain 

 amount of independent vitality, and they may be separated 

 from the parent stem in such a way as to give origin to new 

 individuals. In some instances buds are produced, which are 

 detached spontaneously at a certain period of a plant's life, as 

 instanced in stem buds of Lilium bulbiferum, L. tigrinum, 

 Ixia bulbifera, &c. * The cloves formed in the axils of the 

 scales of bulbs are gemmae, or buds which can be detached so 

 as to form new plants. Such is also the case with the corms 

 of Colchicum. In these instances buds are developed in the 

 usual way in the axils of leaves or scales that is to say, at the 

 points where they join the stem.' Besides the true or visible 

 buds, there are embryo buds contained in the bark or the wood 

 of many, nay, probably of most trees. Of these are the ex- 

 crescences called Movoli, found on old olive-trees, and, accord- 

 ing to Signor Manetti, used by the Italian gardeners for propa- 

 gating that tree. These are supposed by Professor Lindley to 

 have been ' adventitious buds developed in the bark, and by 

 the pressure of the surrounding parts forced into those tortuous 

 woody masses in the shape of which we find them.' It does 

 not appear that advantage has hitherto been taken in this 

 country of these as a means of increasing the trees on which 

 they are found, although there is little doubt they might be 



