76 



OPEKATIONS OF GARDENING. 



PART I. 



Sir J. Paxton also observes : 



" 1. All hard-wooded kinds of plants make roots best in clean 

 sand. 



" 2. Soft- wooded require a light soil." * 



Mr. Errington, head gardener of the Agri-Horticultural 

 Society, informed me that of some thousands of cuttings he 

 put down one year in pure sand most succeeded ; but that in 

 the following year nearly all that he so put down failed. He 

 therefore had adopted the material employed in the Botanical 

 Gardens, which, he said, uniformly proved efficacious : that is 

 to say, three parts of sand to one of fine charcoal. This, then, 

 in all cases will be the material safest to use. Notwithstanding, 

 I fancy, in the instance where Mr. Errington failed with sand 

 only, the sand was not pure ; as, indeed, it hardly ever can be 

 when used just in the condition in which it is brought from the 

 bed of the river. And the greater or less degree of impure 

 matter incorporated in the sand may make all the difference in 

 the cuttings for which it is employed, not succeeding in one 

 case, and succeeding in the other. I have myself on occasions 

 well washed the sand ; and it needs only to do so to find out 

 how far from pure it is ; but this is a very troublesome opera- 

 tion, which the admixture of a little charcoal renders needless, 

 as it is the nature of charcoal to correct all impurity. 

 Bell-glasses are not easily procurable in this country, but a very 

 cheap and effective substitute for them 

 may be easily obtained from any tinman 

 in the bazar. This, as seen in Fig. 10, 

 consists simply of a four-sided glass lan- 

 tern, with the bottom removed, and a 

 roof of glass, instead of the tin one. 

 The apertures between the glass and 

 the tin framework must, of course, be 

 well closed up with putty. 



For the propagation of cuttings the 

 following contrivance, of which a representation in section is 

 given in Fig. 11, is the one that, in preference to all others, I 

 have come at last to adopt. 



Procure a wide shallow pan, and lay at the bottom of it a 



* * Magazine of Botany,' vol. ii. p. 55. 



Fig. 10. 



