CHAPTER X. 



OF PROPAGATION BY CUTTINGS. 



Tms, 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 

 obnsequence of their bearing leaf-buds or eyes upon their 

 surface. In striking by eyes, we have the great difficulty to 

 encounter of keeping the eye active till it has organized roots 

 with which to feed itself; the earth furnishes such a supply 

 unwillingly or unsuitably, nature intending that the bud 

 should, in the first instance, be supported by the soluble nutri- 

 ment ready prepared and lodged in its immediate vicinity, in 

 the pith or some othet part of the stem. For this reason, 

 cuttings, 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 capable of 

 multiplying a plant when it bears buds upon its surface ; and 

 as the stem is the only part upon which buds certainly exist, 

 so the stem is the only part from which cuttings should be 

 prepared. And again, as the internode, or that space of the 

 stem which intervenes between leaf and leaf, has no buds, 

 their station being confined to the axil of the leaves, a cutting 

 prepared from an internode only is as improper as one, from 

 the root. It is no doubt true, that we constantly propagate 

 plants from pieces of what are called roots, as in the Potato, or 

 the Scirpus tuberosus ; but such roots are, in reality, the kind 

 of stem called a tuber, and, in like manner, other cases of 



