OP PROPAGATION BY LEAVES. 191 



stalk end into this preparation, would immediately 

 strike root ; and the book was adorned with copper- 

 plates exhibiting both the process and its result, 

 iti the form of fields stuck full of Orange leaves grow- 

 ing into trees. 



Although this work was very absurd, yet it proba- 

 bly originated in the discovery that the leaves of 

 some plants will grow under special circumstances ; 

 a fact often supposed to be much more rare than 

 it really is. In Professor Morren's French Transla- 

 tion of my Outlines of the First Principles of Horticul- 

 ture, Rochea falcata* is named as producing adventi- 

 tious buds (53) from the upper side of its leaves ; and 

 the Orange, the Aucuba, and the Fig, as other 

 instances of leaves which will multiply their species 

 (p. 152) ; the power of Brypphyll-um to do the same 

 thing is familiar to every one. Hedwig found the 

 leaves' of the Crown Imperial, put into a plant-press, 

 produce bulbs from their surface. There is a well- 

 known case of the same effect having been observed 

 in Ornithogalum thyrsoideum. M. Auguste de St. 

 Hilaire mentions an instance of leaf-buds generated 

 by fragments of the leaves of " Theophrasta," which 

 had been buried by M. Neumann, chief gardener 

 at the Garden of Plants at Paris, and of young Dro- 

 seras furnished by the leaves of Drosera intermedia. 

 Mr. Henry Cassini is said to have seen young plants 

 produced by the leaves of Cardamine pratensis ; Eng- 

 lish botanists know that offsets spring from the mar- 

 gins of the leaves of Malaxis paludosa ; in our stoves 

 * See, also, De Candolle's Physiologic Veg6tale, ii. 672. 



