Propagation Cuttings. 171 



Boursault, the Ayrshire, the Evergreen, the Multiflora, and the Hybrid Perpetual, 

 may be planted in beds in the open ground. By October there will be plenty of 

 well-matured wood on the old plants, and judicious thinning will benefit rather than 

 injure them. The cuttings in this instance should all be made with heels, by which 

 rule only one cutting can be made from a shoot. The tops may be used, but they 

 are not so likely to take root. The cuttings here must be longer than those placed 

 in pots to allow of their being firmly fixed in the ground. Nine inches is a fair 

 length, and two or three eyes should remain above ground. When prepared, the best 

 method of planting them is to dig the soil, cutting down a trench every nine inches, 

 in which a row is inserted at about an inch apart from cutting to cutting. A few 

 boughs should afterwards be stuck rather thickly between every two rows, to 

 accomplish the double purpose of shielding them from the sun, and to prevent the 

 ground from becoming frozen very hard. Branches of some evergreens should be 

 used, and as the leaves fall they should be cleared away, or a dampness will be 

 engendered, resulting in loss. The branches may remain till Summer, and after their 

 removal it will be well to hoe the soil to loosen the surface. After this it will be seen 

 which are on a fair way to make plants : the others should be removed to give the 

 prosperous ones a full chance of success and plenty of room to grow. Here they 

 must remain till Autumn, when they may be conveyed to any position they are 

 destined to fill. 



But we have alluded to another season at which propagating by cuttings may take 

 place ; this is from March to May, when the cuttings are taken from plants that have 

 been forced. They are treated in the same manner as related of June cuttings, 

 excepting that the latter are first placed in a cold frame, and the former are placed in 

 bottom-heat at once. Cuttings so made strike very readily ; yet we apprehend this 

 plan is least of all suited for the amateur. First, it involves the necessity of keeping 

 the cuttings and plants in bottom-heat for six weeks or two months in the spring, a 

 time when, to the generality of cultivators, heat can ill be spared. And then it is 

 questionable whether by such culture we obtain the robust hardy-constitutioned 

 plants that we do by raising in the open ground or with merely bottom-heat at 

 rooting time. It should be told, however, that cuttings taken from plants that have 

 been forced root more rapidly and with greater certainty than cuttings taken from 

 the open air. A single eye of an indoor cutting will make a plant. Even leaves and 

 leaflets will emit roots. I have rooted ninety per cent, of both, but abandoned the 

 practice years ago, having found by experience that a cutting with two or more eyes 

 made a sounder and better plant, and that the leaves and leaflets never lived to 

 generate wood-buds. 



3. BY BUDDING. Before we enter upon the detail of this practice let us note a 

 few thoughts respecting Stocks. 



The kinds most commonly used are the Dog-Rose, the De la Grifferaie, and the 



