SLIPPING 181 



but the inner layers, where the vine's vital activities 

 go on, are scrupulously spared. The slight wounds 

 inflicted by this scraping, let it be further noted, fa- 

 vor the starting of roots by arresting the sap. After 

 being prepared in this manner the slips are set out. 

 In soil that has been well worked so that the young 

 roots may push downward without hindrance, ver- 

 tical holes are made with a long iron or wooden dib- 

 ble, and in each of these holes a slip is inserted to 

 the depth of about half a meter. Fine earth is then 

 sifted into the hole and well rammed down to insure 

 perfect contact with the slip, and the operation 

 is finished. 



"Just as the process of layering is facilitated by 

 the formation of a ring-shaped swelling where the 

 descending sap is arrested in its course either by a 

 ligature or by the removal of a ring of bark, so the 

 same artifice can be advantageously employed in 

 propagating by means of slips. Around the shoot 

 selected as slip for the next year's planting an iron 

 wire is tightly bound; or, instead of this, a ring 

 of bark is cut away. By autumn a swelling will have 

 formed all about the stem, whereupon the shoot is 

 detached and placed in the ground for the winter 

 in order that the swelling may become a little fur- 

 ther enlarged and somewhat softened. In the spring 

 the shoot is taken up again, trimmed so that it shall 

 have only four or five buds left, and planted like an 

 ordinary slip. From the ring-shaped swelling 

 caused by the accumulation of sap roots will start 



"All the advantages offered by the ring-shaped 



