98 WINTER GREENERIES AT HOME. 



In the first place, many flower seeds are exceedingly 

 small, perhaps "the least of all seeds." On looking at 

 them, you wonder that they can ever produce the great 

 plants from which they come, and, in fact, the most of 

 them never do. At any rate, they must run the gauntlet 

 of many perils. Owing to their minuteness they are very 

 liable to be overwhelmed in the soil, and thus destroyed. 

 If they germinate at all, the seedlings are so fragile as to 

 yield to the slightest disturbance, even that of watering 

 from a fine rose sprinkler, unless it is managed with great 

 care. And then, with all the dangers passed, there is a 

 large amount of growing to be done which, of course, re- 

 quires time of corresponding extent. Very different in 

 all respects is the well-selected cutting or layer. As it 

 has scarcely any infancy at all, it has few critical stages 

 to pass. With its roots well started, it is already a half- 

 grown plant, and will soon attain its "majority." Such 

 differences as these must be of considerable importance 

 to all winter greeneries. 



Observe, still further, that a seed has the advantage or 

 disadvantage of being a new product. It is often, not 

 always, derived from two somewhat different plants, as 

 in "cross fertilization." In such case, it produces an 

 entirely new plant, which partakes of the characteristics 

 of both the parent plants, resembling each, differing from 

 each, and constituting sometimes an improved variety. 

 Suffice it to say, there are many differences between the 

 seedling and the parent plant, or plants, resulting from 

 the process of fertilization, whether controlled or left to 

 itself. It is this fact which gives to "seed-growing" the 

 dignity of an art ; at the same time, it explains such ex- 

 pressions as "not coming true from seed," "the running 

 out of varieties," etc. Now, on the other hand, a rooted 

 cutting is, in the strictest sense, only a part of the plant 

 from which it is taken. It is as really identical as if it 

 had been obtained by a division of the roots. It therefore 



