OF PROPAGATION BY CUTTINGS. 195 



dity, and, at the same time, cuts off the approach of 

 those direct solar rays, which, acting as a stimulus to 

 perspiration, -would hare a tendency to exhaust the 

 leaves of their fluid before they could organize, at 

 their base, the new matter from which the leaf-bud is 

 evidently produced. 



CHAPTEE X. 

 OF PROPAGATION BY CUTTINGS. 



This, which is the most common of all modes of 

 artificial propagation except grafting, depends upon 

 essentially the same principle as propagation by eyes; 

 that is to say, the pieces of a plant called cuttings 

 possess a power of growth in consequence of their 

 bearing leaf-buds or eyes upon their surface. In 

 striking by eyes, we have the great difficulty to en- 

 counter of keeping the eye active till it has organised 

 roots with which to feed itself; the earth furnishes 

 such a supply unwillingly or unsuitably, nature in- 

 tending that the bud should, in the first instance, be 

 supported by the soluble nutriment ready prepared 

 and lodged in its immediate vicinity, in the pith or 

 some other part of the stem. For this reason, cut- 

 tings, which consist of eyes and the part containing 

 their proper aliment, usually strike root more freely 

 than eyes by themselves. 



This being so, it is plain that a cutting is only capa- 

 ble of multiplying a plant when it bears buds upon its 



