52 PROPAGATION OF THE PvOSE. 



The first thing, then, to look to, is to obtain >, -anches of the rose 

 tree from which we want to produce other plants. If you obtain 

 these branches before you are ready to use them, plant the thick end 

 in the ground, and do not let the sun come near them, as it would soon 

 destroy them ; but they ought not to be an hour longer than you can 

 help unused. Get some bass matting for ties, or very coarse worsted, 

 which some prefer, because it gives way better if the bud swells, and 

 will stand the weather longer. With a very sharp knife, called a 

 "budding knife," if you have one, and, if not, any other, and a thin piece 

 of hard wood or ivory, like a diminutive paper knife, you may go to 

 work. The knife is to slit the bark down to the wood wherever you 

 mean to put in the bud, and the piece of hard wood or ivory, with a 

 sort of blunt edge like a paper knife, is to divide the bark from the 

 * wood by running it along under the bark, on each side of the slit. 



Stocks for Budding and Grafting. The great call for these articles 

 has made it somewhat difficult to procure them anywhere but at the 

 nurseries ; and when you consider you can pick and choose at some 

 price or other, the nurseries are the best place for an amateur to pur- 

 chase. In* some parts of the country, the briers are plentiful, but they 

 are mostly in hedge rows, and it is somewhat perilous work to grub 

 them up without permission ; nevertheless, many men get their living 

 by collecting these for the nursery grounds. The stocks should be 

 procured at the fall of the leaf, and be straight, strong, well rooted and 

 compact. These should be placed in rows, eighteen in*, hes apart from 

 each other, and three-foot or three-foot-six-inch vacancies between 

 the rows ; they should be staked, or, which is better, stakes should 

 be put at equal distances, and a rail along them, to which rail all the 

 stocks should be fastened by strong ties, the whole being well trodden 

 in after the manner that new roses are planted. 



The preparation of- the roots should be in all resj. ects the same, and 

 the stocks are generally shortened before you get them to the height 

 their growth best adapts them for. Here they remain till they begin 

 to push in spring, when all the lower buds must be rubbed off, leav- 

 ing the three or four that are highest up the stock to see which will 

 grow best. It will be found that some of these stocks have died 

 down to a considerable distance ; but as they are not of the slightest 

 importance above the top growing bud, you may, with a strong knife, 

 cut right down to the bud, or leave it till afte~ the summer growth of 



