78 GARDEN AND FARM TOPICS. 



remember, some years ago, my foreman insisted that we 

 should put in a lot of the prunings of a lot of new Hybrid 

 Perpetual Roses that we had received in December from 

 Europe, in our regular Propagating House. I told him it 

 was useless; but he insisted on being allowed to try. I 

 gave him the privilege, provided he did the work in his 

 own time at night. He worked most diligently, and got 

 three or four of the hands to help him for a week at nights. 

 He got some 20,000 cuttings in the propagating bench, 

 where the temperature of the sand marked 65. The 

 cuttings threw out shoots an inch in length, callused 

 beautifully, and up to that point any one that had not 

 gone through the thing before would have said that the 

 operation was a success. One morning, about ten days 

 after being put in, he called me to witness his victory ; 

 but I astounded him by saying, that for every plant he 

 made from the 20,000 cuttings I would give him 25 cents. 

 He watched and redoubled his care; but it was no use. In 

 less than a month every cutting had blackened and 

 rotted. 



Had the temperature of the sand never exceeded 

 40, a large proportion would have rooted; but it would 

 have taken four or five months to do so; and then the 

 results are never so satisfactory as when cuttings are 

 made from the green wood taken from growing plants 

 under glass. When, however, there is no green-house at 

 hand, but only cold frames, such as are used for cabbage 

 or lettuce plants, the hard wood cuttings of Roses placed 

 in such in October will, if not too much frozen, root 

 strongly by April. One of our market gardeners here has 

 followed the plan for twenty years. His cold frames, 

 where he keeps his cabbage plants, are well sheltered, 

 and he roots thousands of Hybrid Perpetual Rose cut- 

 tings simply by sticking them between the rows of cab- 



