General Notices. 633 



also earlier. Pears on quinces become more high-coloured ; peaches on plum 

 stocks are coarser than on peaches, and much inferior in quality. Apples on 

 the Siberian bitter-sweet are more highly coloured than on the crab. An 

 apricot is said to have been worked on a greengage plum, and a quince upon 

 the autumn bergamot pear; the apricot became as juicy as the greengage, and 

 far more delicate, the quince was much more tender, and less gritty. Now, 

 if the quality of fruit is affected by the stock that bears it, one would infer 

 that the goodness of all our cultivated fruits is deteriorated by their being 

 uniformly worked upon stocks whose fruit is worthless ; for example, the 

 almond or the austere plum can only injure the peaches they are made to bear, 

 the crab the apple, and so on. On the other hand, if trees of excellent 

 quality were used for stocks, they ought to improve the fruit of the scion 

 that is worked upon them. We see that some German writers, proceeding 

 upon some such reasoning as this, have been recommending gardeners to 

 practise the art of " ennobling " fruit trees, by taking the best varieties for 

 stocks, instead of the worst, and they assert that, by such means, the excel- 

 lence of fruit is greatly increased. Treffz is represented by Meyer, as trans- 

 lated in Taylor's Magazine, to have made known, as long ago as 1803, several 

 instances of ennobling; from which it appears that apple trees twice ennobled 

 bore fruit of distinguished excellence, currants and gooseberries improved 

 after one ennobling, and much more so after the operation had been repeated 

 three and four times. The bud of a variegated white jasmine being inserted in 

 the bark of Jasminum revolutum, though the eye did not grow, yet as the bark 

 lived and adhered, such was its influence, that the revolute jasmine became 

 variegated. If a taint producing variegation can be thus communicated, why 

 not some other quality, such as taste, flavour, or smell {Gard. Chron., vol. i. 

 p.i307.) 



Propagation hy heaves. — You requested me to state in writing, the success 

 which I had many years ago in raising certain monocotyledonous plants from 

 the leaf. In the year 1809, 1 first tried to raise bulbs of a Cape ornithoga- 

 lum, bjf setting a cutting of a leaf. The leaf was cut ofFjust below the surface 

 of the earth, in an early stage of its growth, before the flower-stalk had begun 

 to rise, and it was set in the earth near the edge of the pot in which the mo- 

 ther plant was growing, and so left to its fate. The leaf continued quite fresh, 

 and, on examination (when the bulb was flowering), a number of young bulbs 

 and radical fibres were found adhering to it. They appeared to have been 

 formed by the return of the sap which had nourished the leaf. Thereupon 

 two or three leaves more were taken off and placed in like situations, but they 

 turned yellow, and died without producing any bulbs. It appeared to me 

 then, and it was confirmed by subsequent experience, that, in order to obtain 

 a satisfactory result, the leaf must be taken off" while the plant is advancing in 

 growth. I found it easy thus to multiply some bulbs that did not willingly 

 produce offsets. I afterwards tried, without cutting the leaf off", to make an 

 oblique incision in it under ground, and in some cases just above ground ; at- 

 tempting, in fact, to raise bulbs by layering the leaf. This attempt was also 

 successful ; and some young bulbs were formed on the edge of the cut above 

 ground, as well as below. I tried cuttings of the stem of some species of 

 iilium, and obtained bulbs at the axil of the leaf, as well as from the scales of 

 the bulb ; and that practice has been since much resorted to by gardeners, 

 though I believe it originated with me. I raised a great number of bulbs of 

 the little plant which has been successively called Massonfct, <S'cilla, and -Hya- 

 cinthus corymbosus, by setting a pot full of its leaves, and placing a bell-glass 

 over them for a short time. A bulb was obtained with equal facility from a 

 leaf of a rare species of Eucomis ; and experiments with the leaves of lache- 

 nalias were generally successful. I apprehend that all liliaceous bulbs may 

 be thus propagated ; but the more fleshy the leaf; the more easily the object 

 will be attained. {W. Herbert, in Gard. Chron. for 1841, p. 381.) 



Budding. — Much depends on the edge of the shield of the bark containing 

 the bud being cut quite smooth. In the act of cutting out the piece of 

 wood with the bud, if there is much to be done, the knife is soon blunted in 



