342 ON THE PROPAGATION OF TREES BY CUTTINGS IN SUMMER. 



about a month ago, some cuttings of the old double-blossomed white and 

 Warratah camellia, having reduced the wood to little more than half an 

 inch in length, and cut it off obliquely, so as to present a long surface of it ; 

 and I reduced it further by paring it very thin, at and near to its lower 

 extremities. The leaves continue to look perfectly fresh ; and the buds 

 in more than one instance have produced shoots of more than an inch in 

 length, and apparently possessing perfect health and much vigour. Water 

 has been very abundantly given ; because I conceived that the flow of 

 arterial sap from the leaf would be so great, comparatively with the 

 quantity of the bark and alburnum of the cuttings, as to preclude the 

 possibility of the rooting of these. 



The cuttings above described present, in the organisation, a considerable 

 resemblance to seedling trees at different periods of the growth of the 

 latter. The bud very closely resembles the plumule ; and the leaf, the 

 cotyledon, extended into a seed-leaf; and the organ which has been 

 and is called a radicle, is certainly a caudex, and not a root. It is 

 capable of being made to extend, in some cases, to more than two 

 hundred times its first length, between two articulations ; a power which 

 is not possessed in any degree by the roots of trees. Whether the caudex 

 of the cuttings of camellia, above mentioned, have emitted, or will or will 

 not emit roots, I am not yet prepared to decide ; but I entertain very 

 confident hopes of success. 



