ROSE — SMILAX 401 
agreeable to breathe, but fatal to mildew. Again, a little sulfur may 
be sprinkled here and there on the cooler parts of the greenhouse flue. 
Under no circumstances, however, ignite any sulfur in a greenhouse. 
The vapor of burning sulfur is death to plants. 
Propagation of house roses. —- The writer has known women who 
could root roses with the greatest ease. They would simply break off 
a branch of the rose, insert it in the flower-bed, cover it with a bell- 
jar, and in a few weeks they would have a strong plant. Again they 
would resort to layering; in which case a branch, notched halfway 
through on the lower side, was bent to the ground and pegged down so 
that the notched part was covered with a few inches of soil. The 
layered spot was watered from time to time. After three or four 
weeks roots were sent forth from the notch and the branch or buds 
began to grow, when it was known that the layer had formed roots. 
Several years ago a friend took a cheese-box, filled it with sharp 
sand to the brim, supported it in a tub of water so that the lower half- 
inch of the box was immersed. The sand was packed down, sprinkled, 
and single-joint rose cuttings, with a bud and a leaf near the top, were 
inserted almost their whole length in the sand. This was in July, a 
hot month, when it is usually difficult to root any kind of cutting: 
moreover, the box stood on a southern slope, facing the hot sun, with- 
out a particle of shade. The only attention given the box was to keep 
the water high enough in the tub to touch the bottom of the cheese- 
box. In about three weeks he took out three or four dozen of as 
nicely rooted cuttings as could have been grown in a greenhouse. 
The “saucer system,” in which cuttings are inserted in wet sand 
contained in a saucer an inch or two deep, to be exposed at all times 
to the full sunshine, is of a similar nature. The essentials are, to give 
the cuttings the ‘full sun” and to keep the sand saturated with 
water. 
Whatever method is used, if cuttings are to be transplanted after 
rooting, it is important to pot them off in small pots as soon as they 
have a cluster of roots one-half inch or an inch long. Leaving them 
too long in the sand weakens the cutting. 
Smilax of the florists is closely allied to asparagus (it is Asparagus 
medeoloides of the botanists). While it cannot be recommended for 
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