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send living insects especially those that bore in plants or live in 

 earth. They should be supplied with food but no provision need, 

 as a rule, be made for air. In every case a specimen showing the 

 damage done should be sent. When possible living insects, on or 

 in their food plant, should be forwarded and if there is risk of the 

 insects dying a few should also be sent preserved. 



Full particulars should accompany every specimen, such as : — 

 Nature and extent of damage, time of its appearance, previous 

 conditions of the plant attacked, the name of the plant, the locality 

 and every fact that may be known of the pest in question. Great 

 care should be taken to make the specimens fully representative 

 of the insect and its work, and to ensure their arrival in good 

 condition. 



ELEMENTARY NOTES ON THE PROPAGATION 

 OF PLANTS. 



By C. Curtis, f. l. s. 



Dame Nature's principal method of propagating plants is by 

 means of seeds, but as she does not,, as a rule, succeed in raising 

 one ten-thousandth part of her progeny her methods cannot be 

 blindly adopted by the planter or forester whose aim is to produce 

 a large number of plants of a given kind in a short space of time. 



In nurseries and places where large numbers of plants are pro- 

 duced for sale numerous methods, some of them exceedingly Clevel- 

 and known to but few, are adopted for multiplying what are 

 termed difficult subjects. Fortunately the commercial products 

 with which planters in this region are at present mainly concerned 

 do not offer any special difficulties in the matter of propagation 

 and therefore one or other of the means herein mentioned will 

 generally meet the case. 



The most general methods in use, and one or other of which 

 succeeds with the majority of plants, are seeds, cuttings, grafts, 

 buds, layers, division; and what for want of a better name is 

 known as marcottage. The latter is what is generally spoken of 

 here as grafting and is the method principally adopted by natives 

 to increase any good variety of fruit or flower. It is both in prin- 

 ciple and practice different from grafting and its main advantages 

 are the production of fruit in less time than if grown from seed, 

 and the certainty of perpetuating exactly what is desired. The 

 latter is also one of the objects of grafting proper, but there are 

 also other reasons for grafting one of the principal being to induce 

 more vigorous growth by placing the graft on a stock with a better 

 constitution or more adapted to the climate. 



Seeds. 



There are few kinds of trees or shrubs that do not at some time 

 or other produce seeds, though it may not be until they have at- 

 tained considerable age, and the intervals between the seed -bearing 



