288 POTS SUITED FOR CUTTINGS. 



(Fig. XLII. a d) into one of larger size, having first closed 

 up the bottom of the former with clay (a) ; then having filled 

 the bottom of the outer pot with crocks, he fills up the sides 

 (c c) with propagating soU, in which his cuttings are so placed 

 that their root ends rest against the sides of the inner pot ; the 

 latter is then filled with water, which passes very slowly 



Fig. XLII. 



through the sides until it reaches the cuttings. . (See Gardeners' 

 Magazine, vol. xi., p. 564.) In many cases,, especially in 

 striking such plants as Heaths, gardeners employ a stratum of 

 silver sand, placed immediately over the earth in which such 

 plants love to grow. The cuttings are inserted into the sand, 

 but so near the earth that the roots, presently after their 

 emission, find themselves in it, and consequently in contact 

 with a source of food. This sand answers the same purpose as 

 placing the root end of the cutting in contact with the pot, and 

 is an ingenious device for doing that with small cuttiogs, 

 which cannot be conveniently done otherwise except with large 

 ones. 



5. The cuttiags are eventually placed in a hot-bed. This is 

 for the purpose of giving them a stimulus at exactly that time 

 when they are most ready to receive it. Had they been forced 

 at first in bottom heat, the stimulus would have been appKed 

 to cuttings whose excitability had not been renovated, and the 

 consequence would have been a development of the powers of 

 growth so languid that they probably would not have survived 

 the coming winter : but, the stimulus being withheld till the 



