CHAPTER IX. 



OF PEOPAaATION BY MERE LEAVES. 



In the beginning of the last century, Richard Bradley, a 

 Fellow of the Royal Society, published a translation from the 

 Dutch of Agricola, of a book upon the propagation of plants by 

 leaves, in which it was asserted that, by the aid of a mastic 

 invented by the author, the leaves of any plant, dipped at the 

 stalk end into this preparation, would immediately strike root ; 

 and the book was adorned with copperplates exhibiting both 

 the process and its result, in the form of fields stuck full of 

 Orange leaves growing into trees. 



One of ttese plates illustrates, "How by means of ftre and mummyj 

 leaves, twigs, buds, and branches may be turned into shrubs and trees 

 by planting them in the ground." 



" Having observed," he adds, "that the leaves of some plants may 

 very well be used instead of joints or shoots, I shall now undertake to 

 show how the leaves take root. The curiosity for cultivating vegeta- 

 bles, it is well known, has long since been carried so far as to occasion 

 an attempt to raise a tree from a leaf, just as F. Mandirola made the 

 experiment with a Lemon- tree-leaf. His words upon this subject, 

 taken out of his writings, are as follows : — ' I tryed a masterpiece, to 

 wit, to plant Citron, Lemon, and such like, leaves after the following 

 manner. I took for that purpose a sort of little flower-pot full of the best- 

 sifted earth ; I planted in it some leaves of those kinds of trees, with 

 their stalks so deep that the third part of the leaf was covered with 

 earth ; over that pot I fastened a smaU pitcher full of water, so as 

 that it might drop directly down into the middle of the pot, and the 

 hoUow which was made by the falling of the drops I continually filled 

 up with fresh earth : thus they cost me but a little trouble, and they all 

 shot up and grew very well. I pursued it with the greatest patience in 

 the world, and found that through a too often dropping of the water, 

 the leaves began to rot, and so wasted away of themselves by little and 



